A Question of Legitimacy? A Dynamic Perspective on Multinational Firm Control

The control and coordination of a network of geographically and culturally dispersed subsidiaries is one of the most prominent challenges in international management. However, many empirical findings on the effectiveness of various control mechanisms and combinations thereof are still counterintuitive. This study uses longitudinal case studies and cross-sectional interview data to extend control theory by examining why, how, and in what sequence large multinational firms (MNCs) implement controls in their networks of foreign subsidiaries. Our analysis draws from literature on institutional theory, embeddedness, and organizational power to demonstrate that MNC headquarters need to overcome institutional duality when implementing their controls abroad. We find that headquarters do so by using social controls, primarily as a way of legitimizing and institutionalizing their process and output controls that are implemented subsequently.

Eve and evolution: Christian responses to the first woman question, 1860-1900

Historians of encounters between evolutionary science and Christianity have long been aware of the significance placed upon debates about the applicability of evolution to Adam. It has not been widely noticed, however, that in more conservative circles the creation of Eve was frequently thought to be a more difficult problem to solve. This essay examines how, in distinctive ways, the creation of Eve became a point of contention among three communities of conservative Christian thinkers grappling with the implications of evolutionary theory in the period 1860-1900.

Risk-Taking Differences Across the Adult Life Span:A Question of Age and Domain

Older adults face important risky decisions about their health, their financial future, and their social environment. We examine age differences in risk-taking behaviors in multiple risk domains across the adult life span.

A question of taste: Recognising the role of latent preferences and attitudes in analysing food choices

There has long been substantial interest in understanding consumer food choices, where a key complexity in this context is the potentially large amount of heterogeneity in tastes across individual consumers, as well as the role of underlying attitudes towards food and cooking. The present paper underlines that both tastes and attitudes are unobserved, and makes the case for a latent variable treatment of these components. Using empirical data collected in Northern Ireland as part of a wider study to elicit intra-household trade-offs between home-cooked meal options, we show how these latent sensitivities and attitudes drive both the choice behaviour as well as the answers to supplementary questions. We find significant heterogeneity across respondents in these underlying factors and show how incorporating them in our models leads to important insights into preferences. 

Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Late Nineteenth Century Ireland

"Land, Popular Politics and Agrarian Violence in Ireland" provides an original and insightful study of the highly formative Land War and Home Rule from a local and regional perspective. Lucey examines the emergence and development of the largest mass political mobilisation brought about in nineteenth-century Ireland in the form of the Land League, and subsequently the National League, in the south-western county of Kerry. Such an unprecedented level of local political activity was matched by an upsurge in agrarian violence and the outbreak of serious outrage, which was largely orchestrated by secret societies known as Moonlighters. In turn, this book provides an important exploration of the dynamics behind the mass political mobilisation and agrarian violence that dominated Kerry society during the 1880s. The role of Fenians, radical agrarian agitators and moderate constitutional nationalists are all examined within the county.This study has importance beyond the local and provides a range of insights into motivations behind political action and violence at an everyday level during one of the most seminal and transformative eras in the development of modern Irish history. This title is suitable for students and academics of nineteenth-century Irish history and general readers.

Rural Migration, Agrarian Change and Institutional Dynamics: Perspectives from the Majority World

Overall, this special issue provides insights into the mutually constitutive ways in which rapid economic development associated with industrialisation drives institutional change, migration and mobility, and, finally, altered relationships between – and conceptions of – rural and urban. The following papers pose important conceptual, normative as well as practical, policy-relevant questions relating to the human consequences of these processes and point to the applications of population research – a central objective of this journal.