Moral Hazard and the Internal Organization of Joint Research

Revised 2006-06

On Mice and Men and De ratones y hombres: Cultural transfer of substandars characters from literary discourse to film discourse

Eguíluz, Federico; Merino, Raquel; Olsen, Vickie; Pajares, Eterio; Santamaría, José Miguel (eds.)

Global Self-Organization of the Cellular Metabolic Structure

Background: Over many years, it has been assumed that enzymes work either in an isolated way, or organized in small catalytic groups. Several studies performed using "metabolic networks models'' are helping to understand the degree of functional complexity that characterizes enzymatic dynamic systems. In a previous work, we used "dissipative metabolic networks'' (DMNs) to show that enzymes can present a self-organized global functional structure, in which several sets of enzymes are always in an active state, whereas the rest of molecular catalytic sets exhibit dynamics of on-off changing states. We suggested that this kind of global metabolic dynamics might be a genuine and universal functional configuration of the cellular metabolic structure, common to all living cells. Later, a different group has shown experimentally that this kind of functional structure does, indeed, exist in several microorganisms. Methodology/Principal Findings: Here we have analyzed around 2.500.000 different DMNs in order to investigate the underlying mechanism of this dynamic global configuration. The numerical analyses that we have performed show that this global configuration is an emergent property inherent to the cellular metabolic dynamics. Concretely, we have found that the existence of a high number of enzymatic subsystems belonging to the DMNs is the fundamental element for the spontaneous emergence of a functional reactive structure characterized by a metabolic core formed by several sets of enzymes always in an active state. Conclusions/Significance: This self-organized dynamic structure seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of metabolism, common to all living cellular organisms. To better understand cellular functionality, it will be crucial to structurally characterize these enzymatic self-organized global structures.

El discurso en el estudio de las organizaciones. Una revisión de la literatura

[ES] En el documento se presenta una revisión de la literatura referente al discurso en el estudio de las organizaciones, que parte de sus fundamentos teóricos y sus principales aportes. La unidad de análisis fueron 88 textos seleccionados en una revisión sistemática de 5.509 artículos, publicados entre 2000 y 2012, en diez de las principales revistas internacionales relacionadas con la temática definida. Para relevar y categorizar los datos pertinentes, se utilizó el software de investigación cualitativa Atlas.ti, versión 6.2. La comprensión de la información se complementó con métodos de análisis de contenido y de frecuencia. De los principales resultados se infirieron cuatro dimensiones del discurso: instrumental, simbólica, estratégica y comunicacional. Además, se realizó una clasificación de los artículos con base en los enfoques sobre el discurso y las temáticas organizacionales estudiadas. Los aportes encontrados en dicha revisión permiten plantear que el discurso no solo es lo dicho sino también aquello que ha sido silenciado en la organización, campo de investigación que ha sido poco explorado en los textos analizados. Este artículo realiza contribuciones importantes para el área administrativa y organizacional, en especial para todos aquellos profesionales que se interesen por el análisis de las organizaciones desde la perspectiva del discurso, tanto en la academia como en la asesoría e intervención en ellas.

The Environmental, Social, Governance, and Financial Performance Effects on Companies that Adopt the United Nations Global Compact

This paper aims to investigate companies' environmental, social, governance (ESG), and financial implications of their commitment to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC). The focus is placed on companies operating in the three countries with the highest number of UNGC participants: Spain, France, and Japan. The results clearly reveal that adoption of the UNGC often requires an organizational change that fosters stakeholder engagement, ultimately resulting in improvements in companies' ESG performance. Additionally, the results reveal that ESG performance has a significant impact on financial performance for companies that adopted the principles of the UNGC. These findings provide both non-financial and financial incentives to companies to commit to this voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, which will have important implications on companies' strategic management policies that aim to foster sustainable businesses and community development. Finally, the linkages between the UNGC-committed companies' ESG and financial performance may be influenced by geographical spread, mainly due to the appearance of differences in the institutional, societal, and cultural settings.