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National Boundaries (national + boundary)
Selected AbstractsNational Culture and the Composition and Leadership Structure of Boards of DirectorsCORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 5 2008Jiatao Li ABSTRACT Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: How and to what extent does national culture influence the composition and leadership structure of the boards of directors of multinational firms? Research Findings/Insights: Societal norms about corporate structure are treated as components of national culture. Hofstede's measures of national culture were shown to predict the board composition and leadership structure of firms based in that culture. The hypotheses were tested with data on 399 multinational manufacturing firms based in 15 industrial countries. The results suggest that national culture can have strong effects on corporate governance and should be considered in any transnational study. Theoretical/Academic Implications: The predictive accuracy of the culture variables provides strong support for the argument that norms embedded in a society's culture affect organizational structure, at least at the board level. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of institutional theory in explaining observed variations in corporate board composition and leadership structure across countries. By linking board composition to the cultural environment, institutional theory provides an explicit framework for analyzing variations in board structure across national boundaries. Practitioner/Policy Implications: When considering board composition and leadership structure, it is important to consider national culture norms. The findings of the study also have important implications for multinational firms setting up boards for their subsidiaries in different countries. [source] Unemployment clusters across Europe's regions and countriesECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 34 2002Henry G. Overman Summary High unemployment and regional inequalities are major concerns for European policy-makers, but so far connections between policies dealing with unemployment and regional inequalities have been few and weak. We think that this should change. This paper documents a regional and transnational dimension to unemployment , i.e., geographical unemployment clusters that do not respect national boundaries. Since the mid 1980s, regions with high or low initial unemployment rates saw little change, while regions with intermediate unemployment moved towards extreme values. During this polarization, nearby regions tended to share similar outcomes due, we argue, to spatially related changes in labour demand. These spatially correlated demand shifts were due in part to initial clustering of low-skilled regions and badly performing industries, but a significant neighbour effect remains even after controlling for these, and the effect is as strong within as it is between nations. We believe this reflects agglomeration effects of economic integration. The new economic geography literature shows how integration fosters employment clusters that need not respect national borders. If regional labour forces do not adjust, regional unemployment polarization with neighbour effects can result. To account for these ,neighbour effects' a cross-regional and transnational dimension should be added to national anti-unemployment policies. Nations should consider policies that encourage regional wage setting, and short distance mobility, and the EU should consider including transnational considerations in its regional policy, since neighbour effects on unemployment mean that an anti-unemployment policy paid for by one region will benefit neighbouring regions. Since local politicians gain no votes or tax revenues from these ,spillovers', they are likely to underestimate the true benefit of the policy and thus tend to undertake too little of it. [source] PHILOSOPHY AS TRANSLATION: DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION FROM DEWEY TO CAVELLEDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2007Naoko Saito In this essay Naoko Saito aims to find an alternative idea and language for "mutual national understanding," one that is more attuned to the sensibility of our times. She argues for Stanley Cavell's idea of philosophy as translation as such an alternative. Based upon Cavell's rereading of Thoreau's Walden, Saito represents Thoreau as a cross-cultural figure who transcends cultural and national boundaries. On the strength of this, she proposes a Cavellian education for global citizenship, that is, a perfectionist education for imperfect understanding in acknowledgment of alterity. Our founding of democracy must depend upon a readiness to "deconfound" the culture we have come from, the better to find new foundations together. The "native" is always in transition, by and through language, in processes of translation. [source] Ethical issues related to epilepsy care in the developing worldEPILEPSIA, Issue 5 2009Chong-Tin Tan Summary There are three major issues of ethical concern related to epilepsy care in the developing world. First, is it ethical for a developing country to channel its limited resources from direct epilepsy care to research? The main considerations in addressing this question are the particular research questions to be addressed and whether such research will bring direct benefits to the local community. Second, in a country with limited resources, when does ignoring the high treatment gap become an ethical issue? This question is of particular concern when the community has enough resources to afford treatment for its poor, yet is not providing such care because of gross wastage and misallocation of the national resources. Third, do countries with plentiful resources have an ethical responsibility to help relieve the high epilepsy treatment gap of poor countries? Indeed, we believe that reasonable health care is a basic human right, and that human rights transcend national boundaries. Although health care is usually the responsibility of the nation-state, many modern states in the developing world are arbitrary creations of colonization. There is often a long process from the establishment of a political-legal state to a mature functional nation. During the long process of nation building, help from neighboring countries is often required. [source] Political Accommodation and Functional Interaction along the Northern Italian BorderlandsGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2001David H. Kaplan Borderlands are places where large,scale and small,scale politics interact. Relationships between national states at the largescale affect local relations at the smallscale. Likewise, activities at the small,scale redound to the larger scale. While the politics of boundaries and borderland regions is often viewed at the scale of the national states, we argue that politics at the borderland needs to be examined in two other ways: in terms of relations between regions across national boundaries (small,scale) and in the relations between the borderland region itself and the national state (cross,scale). This article examines the nature of ,cross,scale' and "small,scale" political relations in the northern Italian borderlands. This is explored through (1) the degree of autonomy granted by the Italian government towards regions and cultural minorities on the border, and (2) the nature and extent of contacts and shared projects with neighboring regions across the boundary. Two conclusions are drawn. First, that the nature of cross,scale concessions to regional autonomy depends on the strength of the minority groups involved. Second, that the extent of small,scale contact and collaboration across the boundary depends on pre,existing economic interrelationships and cultural ties. [source] Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in Late Colonial IndiaHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010Swapna M. Banerjee Tracing the genealogy of domesticity from India's precolonial past, this essay problematizes the recent emphasis on the link between women and domesticity in late colonial India. Based on a review of the growing literature in the field, it considers the newly evolved notions of colonial domesticity as a moment of [re]consideration rather than a break with the past. The discursive formation of the new ideas of domesticity under colonial regime transcended the private-public and often national boundaries, indicating an overlap where the most intimate details of the ,private', personal life were not only discussed and debated for public consumption but were also articulated in response to imperial and international concerns. This paper argues that domesticity as a new cultural logic became the motor of change for both the British and the colonized subjects and it particularly empowered women by giving them agency in the late colonial period. In conclusion, this paper signals the importance of children, childhood, fatherhood, and masculinity as critical components of domesticity, which are yet to be broached by South Asian historians. [source] In search of legitimacy: personnel management associations worldwideHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 3 2005Elaine Farndale In considering the development of the HR ,profession', there has been little exploration of the role of the professional association. This is particularly true looking across national boundaries, raising questions about the impact and extent of homogeneity of personnel management association activities. It is argued that professional associations have a legitimising role to play in establishing a specialist body of knowledge, regulating practice and providing a source of internal and external identity for practitioners. A recent worldwide survey of personnel management associations found that, although associations are active in these areas, there is a lack of mandatory control and regulation across the profession, diluting the legitimacy accorded by such activities. Association activities were also found to be largely generic across countries, resulting from inter-association collaboration, although different contexts result in different outcomes. [source] European dimensions to collective bargaining: new symmetries within an asymmetric process?INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 4 2002Paul Marginson The impact of economic and monetary union on the structures, processes and agenda of collective bargaining at sector and company levels is explored. Drawing on cross,national evidence from two sectors, considerable differences between sectors within national boundaries are identified, but also some striking parallels within sectors across national boundaries. Convergence and greater diversity are simultaneously evident. [source] Domestic Accounting Standards, International Accounting Standards, and the Predictability of EarningsJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2001Hollis Ashbaugh We investigate (1) whether the variation in accounting standards across national boundaries relative to International Accounting Standards (IAS) has an impact on the ability of financial analysts to forecast non-U.S. firms' earnings accurately, and (2) whether analyst forecast accuracy changes after firms adopt IAS. IAS are a set of financial reporting policies that typically require increased disclosure and restrict management's choices of measurement methods relative to the accounting standards of our sample firms' countries of domicile. We develop indexes of differences in countries' accounting disclosure and measurement policies relative to IAS, and document that greater differences in accounting standards relative to IAS are significantly and positively associated with the absolute value of analyst earnings forecast errors. Further, we show that analyst forecast accuracy improves after firms adopt IAS. More specifically, after controlling for changes in the market value of equity, changes in analyst following, and changes in the number of news reports, we find that the convergence in firms' accounting policies brought about by adopting IAS is positively associated with the reduction in analyst forecast errors. [source] Intellectual Property in the Context of e-ScienceJOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, Issue 2 2007Dan L. Burk E-science promises to allow globally-distributed collaboration and access to scientific research via computer networks, but e-science development is already encountering difficulty over the intellectual property rights associated with data and networked collaborative activity. The proprietary nature of intellectual property is generally problematic in the practice of science, but such difficulties are likely to be exacerbated in the context of e-science collaboration where the development and use of intellectual resources will likely be distributed among many researchers in a variety of physical locations, often spanning national boundaries. While a potential solution to such problems may reside in the mechanism of "open source" licenses, the organizational structure of scientific research may not map cleanly onto the open source model. Consequently, a firm understanding of not only the technical structure but of the social and communicative structure of e-science will be necessary in order to adapt licensing solutions to the practice of e-science. [source] Religious Identity as an Historical Narrative: Coptic Orthodox Immigrant Churches and the Representation of HistoryJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2006GHADA BOTROS This paper looks at how the Coptic Church narrates this history particularly as it transcends the national boundaries of Egypt to serve migrant Copts in Western societies. The historical narrative of the Coptic Church celebrates its contributions to early Christianity; defends its stance in the Chalcedon Council in 451 CE; and celebrates a legacy of triumph and survival after the Arab conquest. Building on theories on collective memory, this paper shows how the present and the past shape one another in a very complex way. The paper is based on interviews with both lay and clerical members of Coptic immigrant communities in Canada and the United States and on textual analysis of books, bulletins and websites launched on and by the Church. [source] Adopting Lead-Free Electronics: Policy Differences and Knowledge GapsJOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 4 2004Julie M. Schoenung For more than a decade, the use of lead (Pb) in electronics has been controversial: Indeed, its toxic effects are well documented, whereas relatively little is known about proposed alternative materials. As the quantity of electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) increases, legislative initiatives and corporate marketing strategies are driving a reduction in the use of some toxic substances in electronics. This article argues that the primacy of legislation over engineering and economics may result in selecting undesirable replacement materials for Pb because of overlooked knowledge gaps. These gaps include the need for: assessments of the effects of changes in policy on the flow of e-waste across state and national boundaries; further reliability testing of alternative solder alloys; further toxicology and environmental impact studies for high environmental loading of the alternative solders (and their metal components); improved risk assessment methodologies that can capture complexities such as changes in waste management practices, in electronic product design, and in rate of product obsolescence; carefully executed allocation methods when evaluating the impact of raw material extraction; and in-depth risk assessment of alternative end-of-life (EOL) options. The resulting environmental and human health consequences may be exacerbated by policy differences across political boundaries. To address this conundrum, legislation and policies dealing with Pb in electronics are first reviewed. A discussion of the current state of knowledge on alternative solder materials relative to product design, environmental performance, and risk assessment follows. Previous studies are reviewed, and consistent with their results, this analysis finds that there is great uncertainty in the trade-offs between Pb-based solders and proposed replacements. Bridging policy and knowledge gaps will require increased international cooperation on materials use, product market coverage, and e-waste EOL management. [source] Aid, restitution and international fiscal redistribution in health care: implications of health professionals' migrationJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2006Maureen Mackintosh Abstract High and sustained levels of migration of health professionals from labour-short health services in low-income countries to the health services of rich countries create a perverse subsidy from poor to rich, flowing across national boundaries. This subsidy worsens international inequality, and creates an obligation, both ethical and legal, for the payment of restitution. Drawing on the case of the migration of health professionals from Sub-Saharan Africa to the UK, we argue that this obligation in turn constitutes an opportunity to shift development aid relationships away from a framework of charity towards a less neo-colonial commitment to progressive international fiscal transfers. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Policy entrepreneurship for poverty reduction: bridging research and policy in international developmentJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2005Julius Court Bridging research and policy is a topic of growing practical and scholarly interest in both North and South. Contributions by four experienced practitioners and in four papers by researchers illustrate the value of existing frameworks and add four new lessons: the need for donors and research foundations to foster research capacity and to protect it from political interference; the need for researchers to use detailed case material in order to inform high-level policy debates within and across national boundaries, often by working in cross-country teams; the importance of presenting research results in such a way that they cannot be over-simplified; and the value of creating alliances between researchers and civil society advocacy groups. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Crossing national boundaries: A typology of qualified immigrants' career orientationsJOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Issue 5 2010Jelena Zikic Abstract This qualitative study examines objective,subjective career interdependencies within a sample of 45 qualified immigrants (QIs) in Canada, Spain and France. The particular challenges in this type of self-initiated international careers arise from the power of institutions and local gatekeepers, the lack of recognition for QIs' foreign career capital, and the need for proactivity. Resulting from primary data analysis, we identify six major themes in QIs' subjective interpretations of objective barriers: Maintaining motivation, managing identity, developing new credentials, developing local know-how, building a new social network and evaluating career success. Secondary data analysis distinguishes three QI career orientations,embracing, adaptive and resisting orientations,with each portraying distinct patterns of motivation, identity and coping. This study extends the boundaryless career perspective by providing a more fine-grained understanding of how qualified migrants manage both physical and psychological mobility during self-initiated international career transitions. With regards to the interdependence between objective and subjective career aspects, it illustrates the importance of avoiding preference to one side at the neglect of the other, or treating the two sides as independent of one another. Practical implications are proposed for career management efforts and receiving economies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A New Global Poetics?LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2009Romana Huk The review article considers the last dozen years' worth of arguments for de-emphasizing national boundaries in the writing/reading of new poetries. It considers the ways in which such arguments illuminate and are illuminated by debates about the future of comparative literature in general, as well as by trends in literary theory (from Hardt and Negri's Empire to Slavoj ,i,ek's In Defense of Lost Causes). The piece moves in anecdotal fashion, charting my own recent invitation to consider whether there is such a thing as a ,new global poetics' (ACLA Conference 2007, Puebla, Mexico) and my subsequent, mixed and changing responses to issues that should, by implication, change the way we both teach and write about literature. [source] Keeping it real: anticounterfeiting strategies in the pharmaceutical industryMANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 5 2008Kristina M. LybeckerArticle first published online: 19 MAR 200 Although pharmaceutical counterfeiting incidents can be traced back thousands of years, it has been downplayed and even dismissed by pharmaceutical manufacturers in the past. That has changed. Pharmaceutical firms are newly dedicated to eradicate counterfeits globally and spending more money on anticounterfeiting efforts than ever before. The confluence of three factors seems to have drastically changed the existing paradigm for the pharmaceutical industry: increasing globalization, advancing technology, and the controversies surrounding the WTO Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement and access to medicines. Given that counterfeit pharmaceuticals slip into the supply chain at every link, multinational pharmaceutical firms are searching for global solutions through increased interfirm cooperation along the supply chain. This research presents a theoretical model for characterizing the implications of these interventions on the motivations driving counterfeiters. The interventions are shown to increase the share of real pharmaceuticals and decrease the welfare losses attributable to counterfeiting. In practice, it is too early to evaluate the success of these new measures, but this research reflects on the extent of cooperation both across the supply chain and national boundaries and examines the likely long-run implications of these measures. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Northeast Asian Energy Cooperation: The Irkutsk Pipeline Project,PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 2 2004Euikon Kim Northeast Asia is a cluster of countries with wide differences in political systems, stages of economic development, levels of technology, and natural resource endowments. In addition, infrastructures of national economies are mutually complementary: Japan and Korea have capital and technology on the one hand and Russia and China enjoy abundant resources and cheap labor. Yet many socio-political elements have so far barred active economic cooperation among Northeast Asian national economies from becoming a reality, such as, North Korean nuclear issues, different ideologies, unstable political systems, and anti-Japanese sentiments. The Irkutsk Pipeline Projects can be a litmus test for the future economic cooperation in the region. Market forces in Russia, Japan, South Korea and China increasingly tend to jump national boundaries and to escape political control, seeking for economic profits, whereas socio-political factors have tendency to restrict and channel the economic activities. Thus, problems of the Irkutsk Pipeline Projects lie in how and where those positive and negative factors are reconciled. [source] Peace History Intra -Abrams: The Field from 1938 through His Work on the Nobel Peace PrizePEACE & CHANGE, Issue 1 2005Charles Chatfield In the generation prior to Irwin Abram's (2001) second edition of The Nobel Peace Prize, the field of peace history has proliferated dramatically and has become ever more a comprehensive record of social reform, as well as a multi-disciplinary approach using social mobilization analysis in innovative ways. The field has also become increasingly international, in terms or cooperative research across national boundaries, in its subject matter, and in its contribution to a global paradigm shift regarding war and peace. [source] The Anxiety of Ambiguity: Nation and Identity in ,e's Man'en gannen no futtob,ruPEACE & CHANGE, Issue 3 2000Ming-yan Lai ,e's Man'en gannen no futtob,ru is a powerful national allegory which affords serious meditation on the difficulties and perils of translating and transcribing the desires for collectivity and national identity in modernity. This essay analyzes the novel's attempt to weave the marginalized indigenous and the hegemonic Western into a ,unique' Japanese national identity. The narrative resolution of the identity crisisreveals a reinscription of exclusionary racial conceptualizations and elision of Japan's history of capitalist exploitation both within and outside of its national boundaries. [source] ICT-mediated diaspora studies: New directions in immigrant information behavior researchPROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2008Ajit Pyati Organizer/Convener A growing and sizeable area of study within information behavior research focuses on the information needs and behaviors of immigrant populations (see Chu, 1999; Fisher, Durrance & Hinton, 2004; Caidi & Allard 2005; Srinivasan & Pyati, 2007). Some of the unique needs of these populations include information to aid with coping skills and social inclusion, as well as culturally specific information resources. Moreover, immigrant communities have information networks that span national boundaries, which affects their needs and uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This panel will focus on the role of ICTs in mediating the information environments of immigrant and diasporic communities. While focusing on how ICTs mediate immigrant information needs, this panel also contextualizes immigrant information behavior research within globalization and diaspora studies. For instance, the concept of "e-diaspora" is a term gaining in popularity, but rarely invoked in relation to immigrant information behavior research. How do new media technologies mediate and influence the information needs and behaviors of immigrant populations? Are localized immigrant information needs mediated by diasporic information sources? The panelists will focus on ICT-mediated services for immigrant populations within the context of both local and global information environments. Questions addressed include: In what ways do diasporic information environments shape local immigrant information needs and their social inclusion into the host society? How does the "digital divide" manifest itself in studies of ICT-mediated immigrant information behavior? The issues addressed by the panel are both timely and critical as evidenced by the ongoing debates in Europe, North America and elsewhere on immigration policy, on integration and identity, and the role of ICTs in a globalized world. This international perspective will be reflected in the composition of the panel. [source] Attitudes towards globalization and cosmopolitanism: cultural diversity, personal consumption and the national economyTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Ian Woodward Abstract One of the widely accepted consequences of globalization is the development of individual outlooks, behaviours and feelings that transcend local and national boundaries. This has encouraged a re-assessment of important assumptions about the nature of community, personal attachment and belonging in the face of unprecedented opportunities for culture, identities and politics to shape, and be shaped by, global events and processes. Recently, the upsurge of interest in the concept of cosmopolitanism has provided a promising new framework for understanding the nexus between cosmopolitan dispositions and global interconnectedness across cultural, political and economic realms. Using data from a representative social survey of Australians this paper investigates the negotiation of belonging under the conditions of globalization. The data tap into attitudes and behaviours associated with a broad gamut of cosmopolitan traits in the domains of culture, consumption, human rights, citizenship, and international governance. They show how cosmopolitan outlooks are shaped by social structural factors, and how forms of identification with humanity and the globe are fractured by boundaries of self and others, threats and opportunities, and the value of things global and local. [source] Where is the British national press?1THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2007John MacInnes Abstract Although globalization has highlighted the danger of conflating state, society and nation, sociologists remain insufficiently alert to such banal nationalism. Newspapers offer a strong test case of the extent of diversity in the construction of state, national and social boundaries, since Billig and Anderson have argued they comprise a special case where their orientation to an audience simultaneously located in a state, society and nation allows them to reproduce a sense of national identity. However, despite the commonsense obviousness of the term, it proves remarkably difficult to define what the ,British national press' might comprise. Circulation density of titles varies substantially across different parts of the UK and editorial copy is altered to address diverse ,national' readerships. ,British' newspapers also circulate in other states, especially the Republic of Ireland. After reviewing how newspapers might be defined as ,national' and/or ,British', we conclude that both Anderson and Billig over-estimate the congruence, relevance and obviousness of state, society and national boundaries. If the conceptualization of such boundaries is problematic in the case of the press, it follows that it must be still more so for most other objects of sociological analysis, including that of ,society' itself. [source] Producing North and South: a political geography of hydro development in QuébecTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2004Caroline Desbiens Since the 1970s, the tapping of James Bay's hydroelectric potential has been synonymous with the tapping of divergent national imaginaries for native and non-native people in Québec. Exploitation of natural resources in the region has activated different narratives of political identity for each community. I explore this evolving political context by examining how, for each group, water has emerged simultaneously as a physical entity possessing economic value and a social artefact supporting the consolidation of national boundaries. I do so by analysing three phases of changing relationships around resource management, namely: hydroelectric development on the La Grande river in the 1970s; the Cree opposition to Great Whale in the 1990s; and the recent agreement concerning a new relationship between the two parties. In each of these phases, nature has been both the symbolic and material tie that binds different national identities and materialises their boundaries. While these are not boundaries in the traditional geopolitical understanding of the term, the forging of an equitable framework of development in the region depends on the recognition of nature as a historical and political formation that answers to different sets of national preoccupations. Depuis les années 70, le développement hydroélectrique de la Baie James a favorisé l'expression de deux imaginaires nationaux dans la province, celui des autochtones en parallèle avec celui des non-autochtones. L'exploitation des ressources naturelles de la région a donné lieu à des récits identitaires propres à chaque communauté. J'explore les changements dynamiques de ce contexte politique en examinant comment, pour chacun de ces groupes, l'eau est à la fois une entité physique possédant une certaine valeur économique, ainsi qu'un objet social capable de consolider les frontières nationales de chaque peuple. L'analyse se fait à travers trois phases de gérance des ressources: la construction du Complexe La Grande dans les années 70; l'opposition des Cris au projet Grande Baleine dans les années 90; et la signature récente d'une nouvelle entente entre les deux parties. Dans chacune de ces phases, la nature a constitué un terrain à la fois symbolique et matériel consolidant des frontières nationales divergentes. Même s'il ne s'agit pas de frontières ,géopolitiques' au sens propre du terme, la création d'une structure de développement équitable dans la région exige que la nature soit perçue dans toute sa dimension historique et politique afin de dégager les différentes priorités nationales qui s'expriment en son nom. [source] Bird migrations and the international economics of species conservationAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2000Harry Clarke The conservation economics of protecting bird species which migrate across national boundaries is examined. A case for adopting a global view of the implications of national conservation efforts and for negotiating efficient international conservation agreements is emphasised. The roles of cost constraints, strategic policy substitutabilities/complementarities, policy reactivity and alternative conservation objectives are analysed. [source] From Global Knowledge Management to Internal Electronic Fences: Contradictory Outcomes of Intranet DevelopmentBRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001Sue Newell This paper considers the adoption of intranet technology as a vehicle for encouraging organization-wide knowledge sharing within a large, global bank. Ironically, the outcome of intranet adoption was that, rather than integrate individuals across this particular organization, the intranet actually helped to reinforce the existing functional and national boundaries with ,electronic fences'. This could be partly explained by the historical emphasis on decentralization within the bank, which shaped and limited the use of the intranet as a centralizing, organization-wide tool. This is possible because the intranet can be described as an interactive and decentred technology, which therefore has the potential for multiple interpretations and effects. Thus, while the intranet is often promoted as a technology that enables processes of communication, collaboration and social coordination it also has the potential to disable such processes. Moreover, it is argued that to develop an intranet for knowledge-sharing requires a focus on three distinctive facets of development. These different facets may require very different, sometimes contradictory, sets of strategies for blending the technology and the organization, thus making it extremely difficult for a project team to work effectively on all three facets simultaneously. This was evidenced by the fact that none of the independent intranet-implementation projects considered actually managed to encourage knowledge-sharing as intended, even within the relatively homogeneous group for which it was designed. Broader knowledge-sharing across the wider organizational context simply did not occur even among those who were working on what were defined as ,knowledge management' projects. A paradox is that knowledge-sharing via intranet technologies may be most difficult to achieve in contexts where knowledge management is the key objective. [source] | ||||||||||||||||