Spotlight on new research publications / July

The Butt of the Joke? Laughter and Potency in the Becoming of Good Soldiers
ABSTRACT: In the Danish military, laughter plays a key role in the process of becoming a good soldier. Along with the strictness of hierarchy and discipline, a perhaps surprisingly widespread use of humor is essential in the social interaction, as the author observed during a participatory fieldwork among conscripted soldiers in the army. Unfolding the wider context and affective flows in this use of humor, however, the article suggests that the humorous tune (Ahmed 2014a) that is established among the soldiers concurrently has severe consequences as it not only polices soldiers’ sexuality and ‘wrong’ ways for men to be close, but also entangles in the ‘making’ of good, potent soldiers. Humor is therefore argued to be a very serious matter that can cast soldiers as either insiders or outsiders to the military profession.

Journal: Cultural Analysis
Published 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Beate Sløk-Andersen

Once Bitten, Twice Shy: The Power of Personal Experiences in Risk Taking
ABSTRACT: We study whether personal experiences are so powerful that they make individuals actively shy away from risk. Our research design relies on portfolio decisions relating to inheritances, which alter the active decision from one of choosing to take risk to one of choosing to reduce risk. Experience derives from investments in banks that defaulted following the 2007–2009 financial crisis. We classify experiences into first-hand experiences, resulting from personal losses; second-hand experiences, from losses of family members; and third-hand experiences, from locations where banks defaulted. Our results demonstrate that experiences gained personally, not common shocks, make individuals shy away from risk 

Journal: Journal of Financial Economics
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Steffen Andersen 
Contact CBS researcher: Kasper Meisner Nielsen

India – Solar Cells and Mexico – Taxes on Soft Drinks: Multilevel Rule of Law Challenges in the Interpretation of Art. XX (d) of GATT 1994 in WTO Case Law
ABSTRACT: Rule of law is developed by various institutions of government and judiciaries at the national, regional, and international level. The interface of rules of law between various systems poses problems as to how to uphold law as supreme when the various systems do not have a clear connecting factor to translate a rule of law with another. The article discusses the multilevel rule of law challenges in the application of Art. XX (d) of GATT 1994, which protects those measures which otherwise are inconsistent with the WTO trade rules, if they are necessary to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. Besides an identification of some overall rule of law challenges arising from when WTO Members apply Art. XX(d) of GATT 1994 to measures which seek to ensure compliance with domestic laws and regulations, the article has a particular focus on Mexico – Taxes on Soft Drinks and India – Solar Cells, which highlight the problems that arise when WTO members apply Art. XX (d) of GATT 1994 as justification for complying with their obligations under international law. There are in particular two issues of concern from a rule of law approach: the connection between international law and national law, like incorporation and direct effect, and the potential jurisdictional and norm overlap between WTO law and other international law. Some of the multilevel rule of law challenges identified in Mexico – Taxes on Soft Drinks seem to be overcome in India – Solar Cells, but there are still areas of uncertainty in the multilevel rule of law clashes between the WTO and other regimes which need to be addressed in future cases.

Journal: Indian Journal of International Economic Law
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Henrik Andersen

Choice of Law for Defamation, Privacy Rights and Freedom of Speech
ABSTRACT: The conflict between defamation and privacy rights on the one hand and freedom of speech on the other in international litigation is very controversial in the EU. The phenomenon, also known as libel tourism, is caused by a mixture of national and EU rules of jurisdiction, choice of law and recognition and enforcement of judgments, even though the former and latter are harmonised by the EU. The problem is that the EU has not yet harmonised the choice-of-law rules for defamation and privacy rights. Thus, proposals for reform of the EU choice-of-law rules are discussed.

The conflict between defamation and privacy rights on the one hand and freedom of speech on the other in international litigation is very controversial in the EU. The phenomenon, also known as libel tourism, is caused by a mixture of national and EU rules of jurisdiction, choice of law and recognition and enforcement of judgments, even though the former and latter are harmonised by the EU. The problem is that the EU has not yet harmonised the choice-of-law rules for defamation and privacy rights. Thus, proposals for reform of the EU choice-of-law rules are discussed.

Journal: Oslo Law Review
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Peter Arnt Nielsen

The Aesthetic as an Aspect of Praxis: Architectural Design as a Cooperative Endeavor
ABSTRACT: Commonly the aesthetic is understood as sensuous private pleasure, which other people cannot experience, but maybe talk about, and on the other hand as created by individual artists' talents. We will attempt to bring the aesthetic back into praxis by arguing that aesthetic experience is tied to Gibson’s notion of perceptual systems. The article builds on observations of a design project for a community center in a Danish village. We argue that the aesthetic is shared pleasure resulting from struggles by participants in praxis, where aesthetic, material, functional, ethical, political, and economic aspects are formed by each other in a dialectic process. The struggles are found in the community council's reasons for starting the process, in the design and construction process and the use of the results. This means that descriptions of the aesthetic appearance of buildings should incorporate relevant discussions and struggles of the design, construction and use of the building, and that aesthetic experience is enriched the more aesthetic experience it is based on. It also means that the key to a fruitful ongoing collaborative process producing good aesthetic designs comes from managing together the many aspects of praxis in an open way.

Journal: Outlines. Critical Practice Studies
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Peter Holm Jacobsen

Feature Selection in Data Envelopment Analysis: A Mathematical Optimization approach
ABSTRACT: This paper proposes an integrative approach to feature (input and output) selection in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA model is enriched with zero-one decision variables modelling the selection of features, yielding a Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation. This single-model approach can handle different objective functions as well as constraints to incorporate desirable properties from the real-world application. Our approach is illustrated on the benchmarking of electricity Distribution System Operators (DSOs). The numerical results highlight the advantages of our single-model approach provide to the user, in terms of making the choice of the number of features, as well as modeling their costs and their nature.

Journal: Omega: The International Journal of Management Science
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Peter Bogetoft
Contact CBS researcher: Dolores Romero Morales

Generational Differences in Managing Personal Finances
ABSTRACT: In this article, we provide a descriptive account of how people from different generations vary in their use of financial management technology, their access credit markets, and how they finance consumption and incur financial costs and penalties. We use a detailed panel of transaction-level data from Iceland on individual spending, incomes, balances, and credit limits from a personal financial management software. We find that technology adoption is faster for millennials, but use of consumer credit and financial penalties are higher for older generations. While the "coholding puzzle" exists for all people, it appears to be more severe for baby boomers.

Journal: AEA Papers and Proceedings
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Arna Olafsson

Individual Risk Tolerance and Herding Behaviours in Financial Forecasts
ABSTRACT: Financial analysts tend to demonstrate herding behaviour, which sometimes compromises accuracy. A number of explanations spanning rational economic logic, cognitive biases, and social forces have been suggested. Relying on an experimental setting where participants forecast future earnings from a rich information set, we posit and obtain support for individual risk tolerance (or lack thereof) as an explanatory variable for herding behaviours. Specifically, less risk tolerant individuals forecast with less boldness and instead issue forecasts in agreement with the consensus forecast. The results are argued to be at least partially a product of cognitive biases and an intuitive reaction to uncertainty.

Journal: European Financial Management
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Jeppe Christoffersen

Images of Entrepreneurship: Using Drawing to Explore Entrepreneurial Experience
ABSTRACT: Entrepreneurship is a generative and transformative process of altering convention where personal/social history, assets, technologies, and trading activity are gathered in organizational form. How entrepreneurs frame this process, and are, in turn, organised by this process, constitutes the entrepreneurial experience. Typically this framing has been researched using narrative methods: how entrepreneurs tell their stories. In this paper we develop an emerging branch of inquiry challenging a sole focus on linguistic narrative in favour of accessing the experience of entrepreneurs by asking them to draw an image of their venture using pencils and paper. Drawing has long been recognised in other social science disciplines as an empirical method for eliciting in-depth and latent information about complex or difficult experiences. In this paper we show some indicative drawings created by entrepreneurs, accompanied by their verbal explanations of what these drawings represent for them, and we highlight how the process was a generative exercise for the entrepreneurs. We focus on two aspects of drawing, which we refer to as “beginnings”, and “traces”, that we feel are particularly relevant to why this medium is valuable for exploring the experience of entrepreneurs.

Journal: Journal of Business Venturing Insights
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Robin Holt

Distance and the Completion of Chinese Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions
ABSTRACT: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the significant lower completion rate of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by firms from emerging economies (EEs) (China in particular) compared with firms from advanced economies, and identify the country- and industry-level factors that affect the completion of cross-border M&As by Chinese firms.

Design/methodology/approach: This study explores the effects of economic, cultural and institutional distances and target firms in technology- and knowledge-intensive industries on the completion of cross-border M&As by Chinese firms. It also examines the interplay between distance factors and technology- and knowledge-intensive industries on cross-border M&A completion. This study adopts a quantitative approach and is based on a sample of 768 announced cross-border M&A deals by firms in China between 2000 and 2015.

Findings: The results indicate that economic distance increases the likelihood of the completion of cross-border M&As when the target is in a more developed economy than China, but decreases when the target is in a less developed economy. Cultural and institutional distances have a significant, negative impact on the completion of cross-border M&As. In addition, target technology-intensive industries have a significant direct negative effect on cross-border M&A completion and moderate the relationship between the distance factors and the likelihood of cross-border M&A completion. 

Journal: Baltic Journal of Management
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Xin Li

Wage Inequality and the Location of Cities
ABSTRACT: We document that isolated cities have lower skill wage premia in American census data. To explain this correlation and other correlations between population and wages, we build an equilibrium empirical model that incorporates high and low-skill labor, costly trade, and both agglomeration and congestion forces. Our paper bridges the gap between the economic geography literature which abstracts from inequality, and the spatial inequality literature which abstracts from geography. We find that geographical location explains 16.5% of observed variation in the skill wage premium across American cities. We use our model to simulate counterfactual trade and technology shocks. Reductions in domestic trade costs benefit both skill groups but low-skill workers benefit more.

Journal: Journal of Urban Economics
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: David Jinkins

Talking Up a Storm: How Backers Use Public Discourse to Exert Control in Crowdfunded Systems Development Projects
ABSTRACT: Crowdfunding has emerged as a popular alternative to traditional funding, wherein project owners use web technologies to fundraise from members of the public (“backers”). The established models of control do not work for this new way of performing systems development, because of the number and diversity of controllers, the restriction of interaction to public online discourse, and the absence of defined hierarchical power structures. This study performs a critical discourse analysis of public online discourse from two famous crowdfunded systems development projects. It develops a framework for the study of crowdfunding control that incorporates the prominent role that power, informal control, and discourse play. The study shows that backers are empowered by their ability to construct a positive or negative public image around a project, and they use this power to impose a diverse portfolio of formal and informal controls. Findings reveal a fundamental vulnerability in crowdfunding, as public perceptions of failure push backers to become increasingly assertive and owners to become decreasingly compliant.

Journal: Information Systems Research
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Rob Gleasure

Enabling Service Co-production: A Theory-building Case Study
ABSTRACT: Service co-production between professionals and customers is an increasingly popular alternative to traditional “off the shelf” models of service delivery. There is, however, little empirical research describing how services are co-produced with individual customers, nor the most suitable roles for IS/IT in this co-production. This study unpacks how services are co-produced by developing a substantive Theory of Service Co-Production activities (and mediating contextual factors) in the financial services sector. A two-phase theory-building approach is employed. First, a preliminary model is derived based on Activity Theory and extant research. Second, this preliminary model is refined and elaborated upon through an extensive empirical analysis of the co-production of financial services. The study further reveals four key contradictions driving service co-production. These contradictions highlight the incomplete alignment of motives and goals between service professionals and customers, as well as the trickle-down IS/IT impact of this misalignment. The study concludes by discussing the enabling and constraining influence of IS/IT in service co-production.

Journal: European Journal of Information Systems
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher. Rob Gleasure

The First History of Our Financial Crisis
ABSTRACT: Adam Tooze's Crashed is arguably the first historical narrative of the financial crisis. It is an ambitious account of the crisis and its global economic, financial, political, and geopolitical causes and implications. Crashed is organized chronologically in four parts—the “Gathering Storm,” “The Global Crisis,” “Eurozone,” and “Aftershocks”—and focuses more on the macrolevel structures, processes, and decisions than on the microlevel and the people suffering from the crisis. Except, that is, in aggregate numbers and a few empathic comments such as this: “As house prices fell, equity dwindled, and the hardest hit slid into negative equity. Families scrambled to slash spending and pay down credit card and other short-term debt. The result was a smothering recession in consumer demand”.

Journal: Business History Review
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Per H. Hansen

Governmentality and Statification: Towards a Foucauldian Theory of the State
ABSTRACT: This article contributes to governmentality studies and state theory by discussing how to understand the centrality and importance of the state from a governmentality perspective. It uses Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Michel Foucault’s governmentality approach as a point of departure for re-investigating Foucault as a thinker of the state. It focuses on Foucault’s notion of the state as a process of ‘statification’ which emphasizes the state as something constantly produced and reproduced by processes and practices of government, administration and acclamation. As a result of this, the state appears as a given entity which is necessary for the multiplicity of governmental technologies and practices in modern society to function. Only by reference to the state can governmental practices be effective and legitimized. Finally, the article conceptualizes the centrality of the state through Foucault’s (preliminary) notions of the state as a ‘practico-reflexive prism’ and a ‘principle of intelligibility’.

Journal: Theory, Culture & Society
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Martin Hein Jessen

Time and Organization Studies
ABSTRACT: We argue that the more time is being attended to in organization studies, the more it is concealed. The time being concealed is not the time of clocks or the linear passage of past, present and future, it is not the time of temporal structures, and it is not the time of processual flow by which all substance is held as little more than a temporary arrest. In all these understandings time is treated as something available and, potentially, affirmative. Rather, it is a time that barely a few hundred years ago was considered a force always present and yet always against us. What, we ask, has happened to this time, the time beyond organization?

Journal: Organization Studies
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Robin Holt 
Contact CBS researcher: Rasmus Johsen

Generalized Recovery
ABSTRACT: We characterize when physical probabilities, marginal utilities, and the discount rate can be recovered from observed state prices for several future time periods. We make no assumptions of the probability distribution, thus generalizing the time-homogeneous stationary model of Ross (2015). Recovery is feasible when the number of maturities with observable prices is higher than the number of states of the economy (or the number of parameters characterizing the pricing kernel). When recovery is feasible, our model allows a closed-form linearized solution. We implement our model empirically, testing the predictive power of the recovered expected return and other recovered statistics.

Journal: Journal of Financial Economics  
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: David Lando
Contact CBS researcher: Lasse Heje Pedersen

Paths to Service Capability Development for Servitization: Examining an Internal Service Ecosystem
ABSTRACT: There is a need to examine the internal service ecosystem perspective to understand how the capability development process unfolds. To achieve this, an embedded case study of ten subsidiaries of a large multinational capital equipment manufacturer was conducted to analyze how front- and back-office capability development progresses across the subsidiaries. Three different paths for capability development were identified, indicating: (i) the sequential development of capabilities and capability renewal; (ii) difficulties of capability replication; and (iii) capability retrenchment and service dilution. It is argued that a lack of interaction between the front- and back-office may constrain progress in terms of realizing efficiencies through the standardization of offerings, processes, and performance measures. Important managerial implications indicate the need to manage an internal service ecosystem that allows for capability replication, which requires a strong center to leverage learning.

Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Martin Jovanovic
Contact CBS researcher: Jawwad Raja

Taxation of Cryptocurrencies from the Danish and Swedish Perspectives
ABSTRACT: The authors analyse the current classification of cryptocurrencies from the Danish and Swedish domestic income tax perspectives. Cryptocurrencies are analysed as they are typically applied in practice, where a categorization is made between coins, utility tokens, security tokens and asset tokens. In particular, it is concluded that despite the economic differences of different cryptocurrencies, they generally fall outside the scope of Danish and Swedish lex specialis regulation on taxation of capital gains and losses from the sale of certain assets, for example, shares and claims in currency. In both countries, there appears to be a presumption that most cryptocurrencies should be taxed as assets held for investment and speculative purposes. It is argued that such an approach is problematic not only in relation to the principle of neutrality, but also because it creates a barrier to realizing the economic potential of cryptocurrencies. The authors conclude that (1) the classification of cryptocurrencies poses challenges and uncertainty for tax purposes due to the lack of a regulatory framework, the absence of common definitions and the diverse technical structure of tokens and coins and (2) the classification for Danish and Swedish tax law purposes should be based on a case-by-case assessment of the specific cryptocurrency.

Journal: Intertax
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Louise Fjord Kjærsgaard 

Social Bricolage in the Aftermath of War
ABSTRACT: While social bricolage has emerged as a key theoretical frame for understanding how social entrepreneurs mobilize and deploy resources to create social value under situations of resource scarcity, there is scant knowledge about social bricolage in post-conflict settings characterised by extreme resource paucity and adversity. Drawing on field research in post-conflict northern Uganda, we show how groups of disenfranchised young people use social bricolage to create social change in a volatile situation marked by extreme resource deprivation and a plethora of challenges arising in the aftermath of war. Based on empirical data, we outline three key practices of social bricolage employed to cope with resource scarcity, extended crisis and volatility. First, we unravel the practice of securing resources and creating social value by mobilizing peers. Second, we show how pluriactivity is used to stretch and make the most of scarce resources in a shifting environment. Third, we illuminate the practice of rekindling pre-war cultural resources to reunite fragmented communities. By illuminating these practices and showing how the context of the post-conflict developing country setting influences the dynamics of ‘making do with resources at hand’, we seek to extend social bricolage theory.

Journal: Entrepreneurship & Regional Development
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Thilde Langevang 

Optimal risikospredning for små aktieinvestorer i en kompliceret verden
ABSTRACT: Private aktieinvestorer får ofte at vide, at de risikospreder for lidt og går glip af en nærmest ”free lunch”. Men der er en fare for at overvurdere fordelen ved risikospredning for private, som har små frie formuer til aktieinvestering. Samtidig kan man let undervurdere omkostningerne ved risikospredning gennem investeringsforeninger med globale aktier, bl.a. pga. mistede withholdingskatter. En begrænset risikospredning ved investering i danske aktier kan for mange være ganske effektiv.

Journal: Finans/Invest
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Michael Møller 
Contact CBS researcher: Bjarne Astrup Jensen

Wage Dispersion over the Business Cycle
ABSTRACT: In this paper, I provide robust evidence that fluctuations in wage dispersion are independent of the business cycle, while residual wage dispersion, i.e. dispersion of wages within narrowly defined demographic and skill groups of workers, increases during booms and lessens during recessions. Moreover, I show that the procyclical fluctuations in residual wage dispersion are mainly generated by cyclical changes in the upper half of the residual wage distribution.

Journal: Economics Letters
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Annaïg Morin

Xiism as a Hegemonic Project in the Making: Sino-communist Ideology and the Political Economy of China's Rise
ABSTRACT: How is Xi Jinping changing the course of China’s rise? Based on a Gramscian analytical framework inspired by Bob Jessop, this article provides an anatomy of Xiism (2012–) as an emergent hegemonic project, that is, a (fallible and contested) attempt by China’s party-based power bloc of altering global power balances in China’s favour while retaining domestic stability. Through juxtaposition with Maoism (1957–76) and Dengism (1978–2012), it is proposed that Xiism reformulates the power bloc’s strategy in three respects. First, the ideological vision of the ‘Chinese Dream’ negates Mao’s utopian-egalitarian universalism while readjusting Deng’s pro-market approach by emphasising ‘common prosperity’. Second, the economic accumulation strategy – built around the hyped Belt and Road Initiative – aims to reshape global trade and production patterns in a way that particularly benefits the state-owned sector, the Party leadership’s economic base. Third, Xi’s state project seeks to amalgamate Mao-style charismatic leadership and intra-party ‘self-rectification’ campaigns with both a Dengist commitment to political stability and traditional Chinese statecraft. The crucial issue for the coming decade is whether the Xi leadership will prove able to paper over the contradictions of this emergent ‘China Model’ and win support for it both at home and abroad.

Journal: Review of International Studies
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Andreas Møller Mulvad

Changes in Child Nutrition in India: A Decomposition Approach
ABSTRACT: Background: Improvements in child health are a key indicator of progress towards the third goal of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Poor nutritional outcomes of Indian children are occurring in the context of high economic growth rates. The aim of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the demographic and socio-economic factors contributing to changes in the nutritional status of children aged 0–5 years in India using data from the 2004–2005 and 2011–2012 Indian Human Development Survey. Methods: To identify how much the different socio-economic conditions of households contribute to the changes observed in stunting, underweight and the Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF), we employ both linear and non-linear decompositions, as well as the unconditional quantile technique. Results: We find the incidence of stunting and underweight dropping by 7 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Much of this remarkable improvement is encountered in the Central and Western regions. A household’s economic situation, as well as maternal body mass index and education, account for much of the change in child nutrition. The same holds for CIAF in the non-linear decomposition. Although higher maternal autonomy is associated with a decrease in stunting and underweight, the contribution of maternal autonomy to improvements is relatively small. Conclusions: Household wealth consistently makes the largest contribution to improvements in undernutrition. Nevertheless, maternal autonomy and education also play a relatively important role.

Journal: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Wencke Gwozdz

Formative Perspectives on the Relation Between CSR Communication and CSR Practices: Pathways for Walking, Talking, and T(w)alking
ABSTRACT: Within the burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication literature, the question of the relationship between CSR practices and CSR communication (or between “walk” and “talk”) has been a central concern. Recently, we observe a growing interest in formative views on the relation between CSR communication and practices, that is, works which ascribe to communication a constitutive role in creating, maintaining, and transforming CSR practices. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of formative views on CSR communication scholarship. More specifically, we distinguish between three variants of such formative views: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. These three orientations differ primarily regarding the temporal dynamics that they ascribe to the relation between CSR communication and practices and regarding the object that is formed through communication. This new typology helps systematize the emerging field of research on CSR communication, and we use it as a compass to provide directions for future research in this area.

Journal: Business & Society
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Dennis Schoeneborn
Contact CBS researcher: Mette Morsing

Organisations nationales et instruments de gestion de l’amélioration génétique des bovins laitiers: Une comparaison entre la France, l’Irlande et les Pays-Bas
ABSTRACT: Since the early 2000s, the development of genomics provides extensive knowledge of the DNA of living organisms. This innovation has transformed the way in which living organisms are evaluated, selected (genomic selection of plants and animals) and marketed. Coupled with political and regulatory changes, this technology contributes to modify the national institutional arrangements in the field of animal genetic improvement as well as actors’ practices. The current liberalization process questions both the collective dimension of genetic progress and the property rights of genetic resources. The objective of this overview is to present the plurality of institutional arrangements regarding genomic selection of the Holstein cattle breed in a comparative perspective involving France, Ireland and The Netherlands. First, it highlights three institutional regimes that reveal different arrangements particularly between public and private organizations. Then, this diversity of arrangements is completed by an analysis of contractual tools developed between breeding companies and animal breeders through models of strategies aiming at the production and exchanges of genetic resources (under their biological and informational forms). These models emphasize various forms of property of genetic resources between companies and breeders and also show that the actors’ roles in genetic selection activities are redefined. These results provide a better understanding of the development of a liberal logic (in The Netherlands) in duality with the reinforcement (in Ireland) or weakening (in France) of a cooperative logic for the production of improved animal genetics.

Journal: INRA Productions Animales
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Eva Boxenbaum

A Practice-based Approach to Collective Decision-making in Pricing
ABSTRACT: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze price decision-making through a practice-based approach. The paper investigates the micro-level practices used to arrive at sales price decisions.

Design/methodology/approach: In this study, a qualitative study approach is used to develop findings abductively. The data are gathered through an in-depth case study at two firms: semi-structured interviews, meeting observations, shadowing and pricing documents.

Findings: This paper finds that pricing is a collective decision-making process involving multiple actors across the organization. The case firms work on solving information, coordination and control problems to arrive at sales prices by enacting interlinked practices. Pricing is therefore neither a structure nor a single decision but a process consisting of multiple micro-level practices that enable firms to make pricing decisions.

Originality/value: This paper develops a practice-based approach to pricing that conceptualize the micro-level practices used to to make pricing decisions in the face of information, coordination and control problems. The paper is interdisciplinary and adds to the accounting literature and the market literature, which have tended to study pricing as a decision made by one decision maker, and not as an organizational process where multiple actors share, evaluate, interpret and coordinate information and decisions.

Journal: Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Sof Thrane 
Contact CBS researcher: Martin Jarmatz

Extra-parliamentarian Political Power and (Social) Media Visibility
ABSTRACT: This article proposes a typology of extra-parliamentarian politics and access to parliament. On the basis of this, it discusses implications for reliance on (social) media visibility and its implications for (dis)empowerment. Theoretically, the article draws on media studies, social movement studies, political science and social theory, particularly conceptions of the public sphere, political participation and visibility. Empirically, it draws on examples of extra-parliamentarian political actors with little or no access to parliament and policy makers and illustrates the ways in which reliance on social media visibility is influenced by an interplay between access to parliament and degree of anti-systemicism.

Journal: Journal of Political Power
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Julie Uldam

Cross-sector Partnerships as Capitalism’s New Development Agents: Reconceiving Impact as Empowerment
ABSTRACT: Cross-sector partnerships are currently praised as capitalism’s key governance instrument to address development challenges. Although some concern has been raised about the effectiveness of such partnerships, little is known about their actual impact. Often it is assumed that partnership outputs transform straightforwardly into societal impact such as poverty alleviation. This article problematizes this assumption. Employing a critical micro-level study, which draws on a qualitative case study of a nongovernmental organization (NGO)–business partnership in Ghana, we examine how outputs provided by a partnership are put to use and perceived as beneficial from the point of view of its beneficiaries. The findings show that the partnership results in what we term “competences without agency” since it provides new resources and knowledge to the beneficiaries but fails to generate the conditions for these to be transformed into significant changes in their lives. Drawing on the concept of empowerment, we propose a new framework, which conceptualizes “impact as empowerment” and highlights currently unrecognized dynamics, which contribute to shaping the ability of a partnership to serve as a development agent.

Journal: Business & Society
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Anne Vestergaard
Contact CBS researcher: Luisa Murphy 
Contact CBS researcher: Mette Morsing
Contact CBS researcher: Thilde Langevang

Does Ownership Determine Business Model?
ABSTRACT: The development of a new energy vehicle industry is considered a sustainable approach to solving the global energy crisis and the problem of environmental pollution. The sales of new energy vehicles in China are the highest in the world, and China’s new energy vehicle enterprises have played an important role in this. The business model, as a method for enterprises to achieve their strategic goals, utilizes resource advantages to deliver value to consumers, and is affected by enterprises’ ownership, competitive strategy, and resources. Based on the resource-based view (RBV) theory, the article uses a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology, selects 30 vehicle enterprises from the mainstream market, and takes product value, suppliers, dealers and external relations, research capabilities, shareholders, and profitability as potential explanatory elements to analyze business model differentiation between different ownership categories. The article explores the reasons for the differences in business models between different ownership classes through case studies and data comparisons. It examines the characteristics and types of business model based on resources and competitive strategy. This study suggests that the ownership of enterprises plays a decisive role in strategic choices and resource acquisition and has a differential impact on the business model in resources and revenue dimensions. A business model represents the result of the interaction between competitive strategy and historical resources, which in turn demonstrates that ownership determines business model.

Journal: Sustainability
Published: 2019
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Contact CBS researcher: Ari Kokko