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Collateral, mutual guarantees and the entrepreneurial orientation of SMEs
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether guarantees characterised by different degrees of relationship lending (particularly referring to collateral and guarantees provided by Mutual Loan Guarantee Institutions) are able to convey some entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions from firms to banks. Design/methodology/approach: Exploiting data from a survey of Austrian and Italian SMEs, the empirical analysis is based on a sample of 328 small business firms. To test the signalling hypothesis, the authors used logistic regressions to assess the explanatory power of EO dimensions on the presence of several types of guarantees. Findings: The analyses suggest that collateral cannot signal any EO dimension, even when controlling for the strength of the bank – firm relationship. Furthermore, SMEs are able to mitigate their financial risk through collateral only in a multiple bank – firm relationship. Lastly, innovativeness, competitive energy and aggressiveness allow SMEs to obtain external guarantees (mutual guarantees, bank guarantees and public guarantees, respectively), helpful in order to promote credit access. Research limitations/implications: The mediation role of collateral and external guarantees on EO – credit access relation should be analysed in future research. Since the role of guarantees can change among different bank lending technologies, further studies should carefully consider lender’s characteristics. Lastly, the use of loan data in respect of the firm data can help to better separate the effect of loan and firm attributes on the collateral. Practical implications: The study suggests how managers and entrepreneurs should manage the financial risk through collateral in different situations (one–to–one and multiple bank – firm relationship). Furthermore, depending on the level of innovativeness, competitive energy and aggressiveness, a firm should request a specific type of external guarantees in order to increment the credit availability, to maximise the possibility of success and to improve its performance. Originality/value: To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to analyse whether EO affects the request for guarantees instead of credit access. This can be helpful especially when the banks involved in the relation apply a transaction lending technology
Viceversa (es.) / viceversa (it.): apuntes para una diacronía comparada de los marcadores discursivos romances
No full textRESUMEN
El adverbio español viceversa y su homónimo italiano son dos marcadores discursivos que se difunden “de arriba hacia abajo” (Pons Rodríguez 2010). Con todo, en contra de lo que cabría esperar dada su condición de cultismos, la sincronía actual pone de manifiesto diferencias semánticas significativas en los respectivos significados procedimentales. El marcador español se emplea con un único sentido de par focal relacional (Sainz 2016); el italiano puede emplearse, además, con sentido contrastivo y contraargumentativo. Nos preguntamos por el origen de los sentidos (si son innovaciones romances o si estaban ya disponibles en latín) y por la influencia que pudo tener el modo de acceso al idioma, es decir, la tradición discursiva de acogida en la diversa evolución romance posterior. Suponemos que el empleo temprano de la partícula española en los textos jurídicos notariales de los siglos XV y XVI al servicio de la expresión de la noción de reciprocidad pudo ser un factor que contribuyó a la consolidación del préstamo y a la convencionalización en exclusiva del sentido focal. Desde el punto de vista teórico, asumimos los supuestos de la Teoría de las tradiciones discursivas (Jacob y Kavatek 2001, Kavatek 2001, 2005a, 2005b, 2008, Pons Rodríguez 2006, 2008, 2010).
ABSTRACT
The Spanish adverb viceversa and the Italian viceversa are two discoursive markers which spread «from top to bottom» (Pons Rodríguez 2010). However, contrary to expectations, the current synchrony reveals significant semantic differences in their procedural meaning. In Spanish we have a very rigid procedural meaning with no polysemy; in Italian we have a less rigid procedural meaning and three different senses, namely, focal, contrastive and adversative. The paper investigates the origin of the meanings (Romance or Latin) and also the influence of the discoursive traditions. It is to be presumed that the early use of the Spanish particle in the 15th and 16th century legal texts for expressing the notion of reciprocity was a factor that contributed to the consolidation of the loan and therefore to the selective semantic conventionalization of the focal sense. From the theoretical point of view, we share the assumptions of the Theory of discourse traditions (Kavatek 2001, 2005a, 2005b, 2008, Pons Rodríguez 2006, 2008)
Evolving biodiversity patterns in changing river networks
No full textBiodiversity patterns are governed by landscape structure and dispersal strategies of residing organisms. Landscape, however, changes, and dispersal strategies evolve with it. It is unclear how these biological and geomorphological changes interplay to affect biodiversity patterns. Here we develop metacommunity models that allow for dispersal evolution and implement them in river networks with different structures, mimicking the geomorphological dynamics of fluvial landscape. For a given dispersal kernel, a more compact network structure, where local communities are closer to one another, results in biodiversity patterns characteristic of a more well-mixed environment. When dispersal evolution is present, however, organisms adopt more local dispersal strategies in a more compact network, counteracting the effects of the more well-mixed environment. The combined effects lead to biodiversity patterns different from when dispersal evolution is absent. These findings underscore the importance of taking the interplay between the evolution of dispersal, landscape, and biodiversity patterns into account when studying and managing biodiversity in changing landscape
Characterization of water chemistry in some communities of the Lower Tano river basin, Ghana, West Africa
No full textThe chemistry of surface water and groundwater in some communities of the Lower Tano river basin, which is a coastal region of Ghana, has been characterized. Based on the obtained analytical results, 80% of the surface water (rivers), 100% of the hand dug wells and 96% of the boreholes in the study area are generally fresh and soft. Silicate weathering is the main hydrogeochemical processes contributing to the Na + ions and HCO 3− ions in the groundwater of the basin. Gibbs diagram used to identify the mechanisms controlling the water chemistry of the basin reveals that rock weathering resulting from silicate and carbonate minerals controls majority of the surface water and groundwater chemistry in the basin. Piper trilinear plots and Chadha’s diagram, used in this study, indicate that ion exchange processes, reverse ion exchange and rock weathering are the main hydrogeochemical processes controlling the groundwater resources in the basin. Stable isotopic (δ 2 H and δ 18 O) composition measurements obtained from the study indicate that 30% of the surface water (rivers and lagoon) are less depleted and subjected to evaporation, while the remaining 70% is highly depleted with negligible to no evaporation. Also, the groundwater in the basin is likely recharged by direct infiltration of rainfall from the local rains of the basin together with other sources
Charismatic Communications: The Intimate Publics of Chinese Buddhism
No full textI argue here that, secularization and state control aside, there has been in recent years a definite resurgence of interest in Buddhist practice in China (Fisher, 2014; Tarocco 2011, 2017). While other have examined its vital role in the production of national modernity and the institutions of the state, my analysis primarily tracks the work Buddhism performs within the everyday realms of media and technology. In looking at how Chuanxi’s charisma is at works in the intimate connections between Buddhism and technology at Huiri Temple, I follow David Palmer definition of charisma as a “relationship based on the expectation of the extraordinary, which stimulates and empowers collective behaviour” (Palmer 2008: 70). Although the mediation of religion in China is nothing new, only recently is the relationship between religion and mass media being more thoroughly discussed (Travagnin 2017; Clart 2016; Tarocco 2017). Outside of China, several scholars have analysed contemporary environments characterized by networked forms of electronic and digital communication and of religion and the age of media (de Vries and Weber 2002), radio evangelism (Hoover 1988), religious video games (Campbell and Grieve 2014) to understand how religious practice shapes and is shaped by mass media. By examining the spheres of pious self-making and social imaginary that are opened up by Buddhist technoculture, I suggest that deep-rooted attitudes towards the circulation of knowledge and charisma inform the current recuperation of monastic ideals and the production of digital “dharma treasures” (fabao 法宝). These are key to establishing and maintaining local, trans-regional, and international networks of online and offline followers. As James Taylor has remarked for Thai Buddhism, new articulations of Chinese Buddhism are “significantly implicated in local-global historical and sociocultural contexts” (2015: 219)
From corporatism to the "foundation on labour". Notes on political cultures across Fascist and Republican Italy
No full textAbstract: Until the mid-1930s corporatism represented the main vehicle of self-representation that fascism gave to its own resolution of the crisis of the modern state; the investment in corporatism has involved not only the attempt to build a new institutional architecture that regulates the relations between the State, the individual and society but has also involved the legal, economic and political debate. However, while the importance of corporatism has disappeared in the last years of the regime, the Labour issue to which it was genetically linked, has found new impetus. After Liberation, the Labour issue was not abandoned along with corporatism, but was laid down in Article 1 of the Constitution. The object of this intervention is a reconnaissance of the political cultures that in interwar years have faced the above-mentioned processes, with particular reference to the fascist "left", to the reformist socialists and above all to Catholics of different orientation, to examine some features of the relationship between the labour issue and statehood across the XXth Century
"End of the End of the Line": The Broken Temporality of David Foster Wallace’s "Infinite Jest"
No full textVolatile Aldehydes Sensing in Headspace Using a Room Temperature Ionic Liquid-Modified Electrochemical Microprobe
No full textThe cyclic voltammetric behaviour of propionaldehyde (PA) and hexanaldehyde (HA), in 1- butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl-sulfonyl) imide ([BMIM][NTF2]), 1-butyl-3- methylimidazolium hydrogen sulphate ([BMIM][HSO4]) and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydroxide ([BMIM][OH]) was investigated at a platinum microelectrode. A clear oxidation process for both aldehydes was recorded only in [BMIM][OH]. On the basis of these evidences, an electrochemical microprobe (EMP), incorporating [BMIM][OH] as electrolyte, was assembled for sensing these aldehydes in gaseous phases. The EMP exposed in the headspace of the liquid aldehydes displayed voltammetric and amperometric responses, which depended on the aldehyde vapour pressures and, consequently, on the temperature employed. The usefulness of the [BMIM][OH] coated EMP for practical applications was assessed in the detection of HA vapour released from squalene (i.e., a lipid simulant matrix) samples spiked with known amounts of the aldehyde. Calibration plots were constructed at 40 °C, 50 °C and 60 °C, using both voltammetry and chronoamperometry. In both cases, good linearity between current and HA concentration in squalene was obtained over the range 3 - 300 ppm, with correlation coefficients higher than 0.991. Reproducibility, evaluated from at least three replicates, was within 5 %. Detection limits, evaluated for a signal-to-noise ratio of 3, were in any case lower than 1.7 ppm. These analytical performances are suitable for monitoring VAs coming from lipid oxidation processes in food. An application concerning the determination of VAs in headspace of sunflower oil during an induced oxidative test to establish its thermal stability was also performed