Hertie School Research Repository
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Traumatic Exit, Identity Narratives, and the Ethics of Hospitality
No full textThe argument of this essay is that migrants, especially refugees, in the contemporary globalized world are inevitably second-class citizens because their stories do not fit the narrative requirements of modern nation-states. As a result, there is no easy way for them to fit either their memories or their aspirations into acceptable forms that fit the criteria for full citizenship in most states. This essay argues for renewed attention to the relationship between migrants and mediation, especially based on the idea that archives are not only records of the past but are also maps for the future
The politics of blame avoidance in complex delegation structures: the public transport crisis in Berlin
No full textThe article analyses the public attribution of blame and the use of presentational strategies of blame avoidance in complex delegation structures. We theorize and empirically demonstrate that complex delegation structures result in the diffusion of blame to multiple actors so that a clear allocation of responsibility becomes more difficult. The article shows that public attribution of blame follows a distinct temporal pattern in which politicians only gradually move into the centre of the blame storm. We also find that blame-takers deploy sequential patterns of presentational management and use blame shifting to other actors as a dominant strategy. However, the analysis suggests that complex delegation structures impose limitations on blame-takers’ use of blame avoidance strategies, and that sequential presentational management becomes less useful over time. The article uses media content analysis to study blame games during a major crisis of the public transport system in Berlin, Germany
On the Forgetting of Corporate Irresponsibility
No full textWhy are some serious cases of corporate irresponsibility collectively forgotten? Drawing on social memory studies, we examine how this collective forgetting process can occur. We propose that a major instance of corporate irresponsibility leads to the emergence of a stakeholder mnemonic community that shares a common recollection of the past incident. This community generates and then draws on mnemonic traces to sustain a collective memory of the past event over time. In addition to the natural entropic tendency to forget, collective memory is also undermined by instrumental “forgetting work,” which we conceptualize in this article. Forgetting work involves manipulating short-term conditions of the event, silencing vocal “rememberers,” and undermining collective mnemonic traces that sustain a version of the past. This process can result in a reconfigured collective memory and collective forgetting of corporate irresponsibility events. Collective forgetting can have positive and negative consequences for the firm, stakeholders, and society
Coalition Prospects and Policy Change: An Application to the Environment
No full textIn most developed democracies, parties adjust their positions to polls and public opinion. Yet, in a coalition government, the policy that emerges is often the outcome of negotiations between governing parties. We argue that the credibility of exit threats by current coalition members and the importance of outside parties for the formation of potential alternative coalitions both matter for policy adoption. Building on a new data set measuring the expected coalition‐inclusion probabilities of parties in parliamentary democracies, we estimate the effect of coalition prospects on an important policy outcome—environmental policy stringency—in nine European countries between 1990 and 2012. Our findings demonstrate that only polling shifts that alter coalition probabilities affect outcomes. Changes in the coalition‐inclusion probability of green parties—regardless of whether they are in government—predict changes in the environmental policy stringency of sitting governments. Political polls, in contrast, do not
Activism for corporate responsibility: Conceptualizing private regulation opportunity structures
No full textIn this article, we examine how private regulatory initiatives (PRIs) – which define standards for corporate responsibility (CR) issues and sometimes monitor their application by firms – create opportunities and constraints for activist groups aiming to push firms towards more stringent CR activities. Drawing on social movement theory, we conceptualize how private regulation opportunity structures affect such CR‐based activist groups' targets and tactics at both the firm and field levels. At the field level, we argue that both radical and reformative activist groups direct most of their time and resources towards PRIs with comparatively more stringent standards. At the firm level, while radical activist groups are likely to target firms participating in more stringent PRIs, reformative activist groups target firms participating in less stringent PRIs, or those that do not participate in PRIs at all. When facing unfavourable opportunity structures, CR‐based activist groups tend either to advocate the creation of new PRIs or to shift their activities to pressure other focal points. This article contributes to moving beyond extant literature's emphasis of PRIs as settlements of contentious firm–activist interactions towards also viewing them as starting points for activist groups aiming to push firms towards a more substantive CR engagement
Input and Output Legitimacy of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives
No full textIn a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy
Managing the past responsibly: A collective memory perspective on responsibility, sustainability and ethics
No full textVariational Networks for Joint Image Reconstruction and Classification of Tumor Immune Cell Interactions in Melanoma Tissue Sections
No full textImmunotherapy is currently revolutionizing the treatment of cancer. Detailed analyses of tumor immune cell interaction in the tumor microenvironment will facilitate an accurate prediction of a patient’s clinical response. The automatic and reliable pre-screening of histological tissue sections for tumor infiltrating immune cells (TILs) will support the development of TIL-based predictive biomarkers for checkpoint immunotherapy. In this paper, a learning approach for image classification is presented, which allows various pattern inquires for different types of tissue section images. The underlying trainable reaction diffusion model combines classification and denoising. The model is trained using a stochastic generation of training data. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated for immunofluorescent and for Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) stained melanoma section images. A particular focus is on the classification of TILs in the proximity to melanoma cells in an experimental melanoma mouse model and in human melanoma. This new learning approach for images of melanoma tissue sections will refine the strategy for the practical clinical application of biomarker research