24 research outputs found
Autumn
"This piece is divided into 4 recatangles. The top left shows a cream background with brown
and yellow leaves. The top right is white with a light tan background an oilve
green weed branch. The bottom left is a light bluish green background with
white wheat stalks. The bottom right has a teal and brownish background
with leaves in the foreground. Each square's contents merge in the
middle of the piece.
From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization
This study surveys the academic and professional literature examining the privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), with a focus on empirical studies. Privatisation has been instrumental in reducing state ownership in many countries and had a transforming effect on global stock markets, although the role of SOEs in many other countries is similar to what it was two decades ago. Countries have adopted large-scale privatisation programs primarily for two reasons: first, the conclusive evidence that privately-owned firms outperform SOEs and, second, the empirical evidence clearly shows that privatisation significantly (often dramatically) improves the operating and financial performance of divested firms. Governments can also raise significant revenues by selling SOEs. While the choice between privatisation via public share offering versus through asset sales is still imperfectly understood, factors such as firm size, government fiscal condition, and the state of national economic development are important influences. Further, those countries which have chosen the mass (voucher) privatisation route have done so largely out of necessity--and face ongoing efficiency problems as a result. Governments have great discretion in pricing the SOEs they sell, especially those being sold via public share offering, and they use this discretion to pursue political and economic ends. Finally, investors who purchase the shares of firms being privatised earn significantly positive excess returns both in the short-run (due to deliberate underpricing of share issues by the government) and over one, three, and five-year investment horizons.Capital, Investment, Employment, Financing policy, Ownership structure, Investment banking, Venture capital, Brokerage, Public economics, Sources of revenue, Public enterprises, Boundaries of public and private enterprise, Privatisation, Contracting out
Recommended from our members
Korean art and the avant-garde dilemma
The thesis covers Korean avant-garde art history and the dilemma that faced Korean artists at the end of the Japanese Colonial Period (1910-1945). Current literature adequately details avant-garde as progressive fine arts; however, there is limited literature on Korean art in this period. This thesis suggests the term avant-garde dilemma to indicate Korean artists‘ difficulty in style selection to follow a traditional aesthetical trend or progressive socio-political attitude for the foundation of Korean post-modernism. A salient démarche is found when Korean political avant-garde artists meet this dilemma in the midst of the Korean Demonstration Era (1976-1989) that initiates the decline of aesthetical activism and Demonstrative Art. Several styles of avant-garde dilemma after the Korea War are critiqued in the avant-garde evolution; subsequently, there arise hybrid styles between socio-political avant-garde and aesthetical avant-garde styles in Contemporary Korean Art. The examples included are Nam-Jun Baik‘s Video Art (a combination of art and technology), Do-Ho Suh‘s combination of meticulous sculpture with installation to satire Korean neo-capitalist society, Doo-Shik Lee‘s combination of oriental color with western gesture, and Suk-Chang Hong‘s free calligraphy to combine still-life, landscape, calligraphy, and scribbling
Iowa History and Culture : A Bibliography of Materials Published Between 1952 and 1986, 1989
This bibliography was compiled by two reference librarians, Patricia Dawson and David Hudson with the goal of making it easier of tracking down material on Iowa history and culture. This supplements the Iowa History Reference Guide published in 1952 by William Petersen
Abstract PS13-40: Real-world outcomes in patients receiving neo-adjuvant chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer
The pictorial wit of Domenico Tiepolo
This thesis takes a new approach to Domenico Tiepolo’s (1727-1804), Divertimento Per li Regazzi (c.1795-1804), it is arguably the artists most enigmatic graphic work, which features the commedia dell’arte character Pulcinella. The drawings have hitherto been subject to rigorous connoisseurial analysis. Indeed, in his introduction to ten of the drawings in a catalogue of Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings in The Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, James Byam Shaw states that this particular series of drawings has now become so famous ‘that it is hardly necessary to add to the literature of the series.’1 In my opinion it would be a great pity if future generations of scholars were discouraged by this remark, for I believe the drawings still have much to ‘tell’ the contemporary art historian and would further benefit from increasingly interpretative readings. Previously, scholars have regarded Domenico Tiepolo as an imitator of his father, Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), and interpreted the re-appropriation of motifs in the Divertimento as signs of old age and fatigue. I suggest, on the contrary, that in this series of drawings in particular, Domenico was an innovator.
This project carves out new territories within the study of the series in that it focuses on the playful nature of the drawings, and how the suite can be understood in relation to contemporary theory concerning games and play, and ludic musical/improvisatory forms. Additionally, the drawings are discussed as a case history in a now popular emerging dialectic on the late works of aged artists: here I consider how these drawings, often funny, poignant, sensitive and delicate reveal how the elderly painter reconciles himself not only to the passing of his own life and the extinction of his family line but to an entire political, cultural and visual tradition
The Interplay of Politics and Science in the Making of Petr Kropotkin’s Modern Anarchism
This thesis examines the political thought of Petr Kropotkin as a site of interplay between anarchism and science. It explores a dialogue between the diagnostic and remedial aspirations of revolutionary anarchism and certain epistemologies and methodologies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientific thought. On the one hand, I argue that this meeting led to the scientisation of Kropotkin’s anarchist politics, transforming conventional anarchist ideas on the state, capitalism, and revolution. On the other hand, I consider how Kropotkin politicised science, that is, how he inflected certain scientific theories and concepts and turned them into powerful revolutionary devices that equipped his brand of anarchism with new ways to identify political problems and solutions. Kropotkin’s bio-political worldview, his enthusiasm for statistics as a means to visualise society and social law, and his understanding of the ‘social’ as a field for the application of rational and scientific forms of knowledge for the improvement of human populations, had far-reaching implications for the ways he conceptualised and articulated traditional anarchist notions of power, domination, moral corruption, order, and the dissemination of knowledge. I show that in contrast to political philosophers who employ scientific ideas metaphorically to represent political concepts such as sovereignty, stability, and resistance, Kropotkin’s absorption of science was literal. Notions of health, sickness, insanity, degeneration, medicine, and hygiene, for example, did not function analogically in his thought, but were, in fact, some of his key political concerns. The intersection of anarchism and science is presented as an agency stimulating a deep ambivalence in Kropotkin’s thought. This thesis does not portray Kropotkin as an optimist, but as a thinker who wavered between fears of decline and hopes for progress. I bring to light Kropotkin’s anxieties, uncertainties, paradoxes, and contradictions, revealing the oscillation between pessimism and optimism that haunted his scientific and political modernity
People, international projects and public administration : interpreting the international human resource management frame
International public sector projects bring the Finnish public sector into contact with management thinking related to international assignments and international project work. In business literature especially practices related to IHRM have been posited as a potential avenue for making sense of international work experience of individuals and providing the formation of more systematic management practices. IHRM research in business schools is well established, but IHRM research focusing on the international people aspects of public administration is scarce.
Drawing on a reflexive analysis of management literature and empirical material produced in a qualitative interview study of Finnish public sector international project professionals within the EU funded Twinning projects, this thesis argues that in public sector context IHRM is a mixed blessing. Mainstream accounts about international assignments and international project work are problematised in the research using IHRM as a cultural frame that includes the elements of international assignment cycle and project HRM practice areas.
The results show that identity construction that has taken place during international assignments might not be accommodated after repatriation to Finnish public sector work, and that the role of international projects in developing personnel was often viewed to be a missed opportunity. From management perspective projects were viewed to be resource-intensive and somewhat detached from other public sector activities. Furthermore, postcolonial dynamics and failures to interpret bureaucratic scripts in international project work prompt an element of potential friction that should be addressed more thoroughly.
Considering these findings, it is concluded that IHRM vocabulary must be enhanced when translated into public sector project environment. Building mainly on concepts in social anthropology and pragmatist philosophy, it is suggested that IHRM frame can be conceptualised as a boundary object between administration cultures. It is suggested that an approach to IHRM that would go beyond managerial thinking should be further developed. In this incorporating an element of critical reflection of the metatheoretical assumptions would enable IHRM to become more 10 People, International Projects and Public Administration aware of its caveats. With such a conceptualisation of IHRM in place, the focus shifts to operating in between the different administration ultures, in the interstitial, and to reflecting actor’s own position.ei tietoa saavutettavuudest
