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Commanding corporate narratives : How military-experienced leaders shape corporate communication
Get PDFThis study explores the enduring influence of military imprints on corporate leaders and their implications for corporate narrative disclosures. Drawing upon insights from imprinting, upper echelons, and strategic leadership theories, we argue that military experiences shape executives' decision-making and communication styles persistently. Utilizing a dataset of 29,633 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2021, we find that military imprints translate into distinct communication patterns, evident in a positive tone in corporate disclosures. We further explore the relationship within varying ownership structures, identifying contextual factors that modulate this dynamic. Our findings have withstood rigorous tests for robustness, thereby providing additional strength to the credibility of our research. Our findings contribute to the literature on imprinting theory, leadership, and corporate communication, underscoring the multifaceted influence of military experience on executives’ decision-making and disclosure styles. Simultaneously, it imparts pragmatic insights for both corporate leaders and stakeholders alike
Real estate and construction sector dynamics over the business cycle
Get PDFThis paper explores property prices and investment dynamics over the business cycle when there is competition between households and firms for real estate. We introduce a construction sector into a real business cycle framework, which uses land, capital and labour to produce both commercial and residential real estate. This market structure activates a real estate substitution channel, where an increase in demand for residential real estate also increases the cost of producing commercial structures, which crowds out commercial real estate investment. In general, we find that the residential/commercial land allocation acts as an anchor for the allocation of its real estate investment counterpart; however, there are notable separations, particularly following the financial crisis, where there was a simultaneous fall in residential and commercial investment. Our results indicate that while residential real estate prices were predominantly driven by increases in demand in the build up to the financial crisis, the fall in demand for commercial real estate played a significant role in generating price falls for both types of real estate in the aftermath. Furthermore, falls in the overall supply of real estate played an important role in reducing real estate investment, which put upward pressure on prices throughout the past two decades
Nature's rights for threatened tropical coasts
No full textExploring nature's rights for coasts is urgent as rising seas, marine heatwaves, and storms increasingly threaten ecosystems, biodiversity, and livelihoods. New legal propositions currently under discussion in the Brazilian Congress will have important consequences for coastal ecosystems and the people that rely on them (i.e., Proposed Constitutional Amendment, PEC 3/2022). Here, we navigate through some of these recent debates to highlight opportunities for pioneering legislation reforms that target coastal conservation in Brazil. The successful case of public engagement to resist PEC 3/2022 sheds light on the potential of Brazilian people’s support to advance nature protection, starting from the littoral zones. Given the fragility of coastal protection in the country, integrating ethical dimensions through the lens of rights of nature provides a powerful framework for more effective science-based conservation. The key takeaway is that granting rights to coasts, backed by civic engagement, could foster their ecological resilience to escalating human threats
Spot the Difference : Investigating the Effects of Ageing on Change Blindness in QR Codes with Eye Tracking
No full textHumans struggle to notice changes in visual scenes, a limitation called change blindness. Older adults show heightened susceptibility to change blindness, which can affect both decision making and safety. Despite increasing reliance on technology in our environments, change blindness in human-computer interactions is poorly understood. Here we used two experiments to explore change blindness in quick response (QR) codes. Experiment 1 recruited 40 participants who completed a one-shot change detection task incorporating modifications to QR code images. Overall, 65.1% of modifications were identified, and detection performance improved with larger changes (95.9%) compared to smaller changes (34.4%). Experiment 2 recruited 60 younger and 60 older adults to complete the same task, while their eye movements were tracked to measure visual scanning behaviour. We examined whether modifications to QR codes could be detected, and whether detection performance was influenced by age, age-related cognitive factors such as visual working memory, visual scanning behaviour and prior QR-code experience. In total, 64.8% of modified QR codes were identified, with greater detection for larger changes (92.6%) than smaller changes (37.0%). Overall, QR-code experience, visual scanning behaviour, and age significantly predicted detection performance, as older adults (61.5%) detected fewer modified QR codes than younger adults (67.9%). Although larger visual working-memory capacity was a significant predictor of better detection performance when considered in isolation, its effect was no longer significant once QR-code experience, visual scanning, and age were added to the model. This implies change-detection performance is shaped directly by QR-code experience, age, and visual scanning
Temporal and spatial drivers of Lyme disease hazard differ between urban and rural environments
No full textOur ability to predict how urban planning may influence public health and wellbeing is limited, because our understanding of the ecological drivers of key human diseases transmitted by wildlife vectors is poor in urban compared to rural environments. Here we examined how temporal and spatial ecological factors shape the environmental hazards of ticks and Lyme disease in urban greenspaces compared to rural environments. Deer space-use, Ixodes ricinus tick density and Lyme disease hazard were estimated at 60 urban greenspaces and 48 rural woodlands across 12 cities in the United Kingdom. Spatial and temporal metrics of urbanisation (built-up cover surrounding sites, extent of recent urbanisation, age of adjacent built-up area), woodland (tree cover) and connectivity, that were hypothesised to influence tick densities and Lyme disease hazard, were generated and their effects were tested using structural equation modelling. Nymphal ticks were detected in 73% of urban and 98% of rural sites, with nymph density and Lyme disease hazard were 3.6 and 5 times lower respectively in urban than rural woodlands. In cities, nymph density and Lyme disease hazard were positively correlated with tree cover within sites, connectivity to larger woodlands and negatively correlated with built-up cover surrounding sites and age of adjacent built-up cover. Conversely, in rural woodlands, woodland age was the strongest predictor of nymph density and Lyme disease hazard. These differences highlight the additional urbanisation-related pressures shaping urban tick and Lyme disease ecology, and the importance of the history of a site and its surroundings, which has strong implication for urban planning
“There Was No Other Option” : An Intergenerational Perspective of Women Resilience in Family Entrepreneuring
No full textThe objective of this chapter is to further understand the challenges women face in the intricate interplay between generations in family entrepreneuring. Prior studies have been limited in explaining how and why a family business in Latin America may be developed by several generations of a family when women lead the firm. Employing a qualitative case study approach, this research examines the journey of a prominent Honduran coffee company owned and led by women. Relying on qualitative methods we identify the challenges faced by the three generations of women leading the family business. Our findings led to the identification of internal and external motivations to face crises and to stand out for their entrepreneurial success. Findings revealed the mechanisms through which a collective form of stewardship influences family entrepreneurship. A model is presented to explain how and why this occurs, along with implications for practice and future research directions
Contracting Out, Opting Out : Does the Mental Health Act 2025 Address the Human Rights Protection Gap in Commissioned Mental Health Care?
Get PDFThe growth in commissioned mental health services from private providers presents a significant challenge for the protection of human rights in the UK. Restrictive legislative protections and the unpredictable judicial application of section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 lead to the denial of justice for those whose rights may have been violated by a private mental health provider commissioned by the state. This ‘protection gap’ was demonstrated in the recent case of Sammut v Next Steps, where the case was summarily dismissed on the grounds that a private mental health provider, commissioned by the local authority, was not a ‘public body’ for the purposes of section 6(3). Seemingly in response to injustices such as this, section 51 of the Mental Health Act 2025 seeks to address this issue, by providing for the automatic application of section 6 to private providers where they have been commissioned for aftercare services by a local authority, or where care is otherwise contracted out by the NHS. Whilst taking steps in the right direction, I argue that this reform does not go far enough and leaves significant gaps in protection remaining for vulnerable patients outside of the narrowly defined categories proposed under the Act. Of particular concern are those in receipt of private mental health care in detention settings, such as prisons or immigration detention centres. I argue that legislative reform is required to ensure that all private mental health care, commissioned by the state is considered a public function for the purposes of the Human Rights Act, ensuring access to justice for those whose rights may have been infringed in these contexts
Stages of Exception : Female Revenge and Sovereignty in Elizabethan and Jacobean Revenge Tragedies
No full textThis thesis undertakes an examination of female representations in revenge tragedies written between 1558–1625, through the conceptual lens of exception and sovereignty. I explore female revenge in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as a site of exceptional and creative agency, operating outside and challenging the existing bounds of law, society, and gender. Together, the chapters demonstrate how women, when they lack the access to justice or retaliatory violence granted to their male counterparts, seek exceptional and inventive forms of revenge, ranging from acts that negotiate the limits of gender to acts of maternal and sovereign vengeance, proxy action, performance, and self-murder. The first chapter explores how female characters seek revenge by becoming exceptional in relation to traditional early modern gender roles, producing greater emotional satisfaction and entertainment for spectators than their timid male counterparts. The second chapter examines how maternal and royal revengers combine personal, political, and sovereign interests, using vengeance to assert power and challenge patrilineal structures. The third chapter considers the creative use of proxies and intermediaries, showing how women extend their agency and enact justice indirectly through human, material, and spectral means. The last chapter investigates self-murder as an expression of vengeance and sovereign power, where women transform death into both weapon and spectacle, asserting authority over their own lives and producing political and theatrical effects. Through oscillation, transgression, mediation, and death, female revenge becomes a form of art, with the stage serving as an exceptional space where women can transform constraint into creativity, absence into presence, and vulnerability into agency. Each mode of revenge shares a logic of exceptional sovereignty: the capacity to reclaim the right to act in spaces where they are structurally denied power, and to navigate creative and alternative forms of justice
Observation of W + W − γ production in pp collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector and constraints on anomalous quartic gauge-boson couplings
No full textKeywords, citations and ‘algorithm magic’ : exploring assumptions about ranking in academic literature searches online
No full textThe accessibility of academic literature has improved considerably because of the internet, with a range of platforms providing access online. It is now common for academic literature databases to use ranking algorithms to sort search results by ‘relevance’. However, it is often unclear how relevance is defined, and it varies across different platforms. This lack of transparency can potentially introduce bias, and impact the rigour of literature reviews. While there is a lack of clarity on the technical features of algorithms, online academic literature databases are now used extensively. There is a critical question of how those using the platforms perceive ranking to function in this context, and how they adapt their information-seeking behaviour. In this paper we present findings from a mixed-methods study, involving an online survey and in-depth interviews with academics, to understand their beliefs and assumptions about relevance ranking algorithms and their implications for academic practice