Private equity and entrepreneurial management in management buy-outs

Critics claim that short-term profit orientation and high deal price strategies of private equity (PE) firms can negatively affect the ability of management buyouts to initiate and sustain entrepreneurial management. This study investigates this claim by comparing effects of majority PE backed and other buy-outs at different levels of financial leverage on post buy-out increases in entrepreneurial management. We propose that PE can be used as an organizational refocusing device that simultaneously increases entrepreneurial and administrative management. We find that majority PE-backed buy-outs significantly increase entrepreneurial management practices. Furthermore, the increased financial leverage positively affects administrative management in management buy-outs. However, the effect of high financial leverage is larger for majority PE-backed buy-outs. These results support the notion that PE firms help buy-out companies develop ambidextrous organizational change: i.e. simultaneously develop entrepreneurial and administrative management practices. The findings have important implications for practitioners and policy makers.

‘Proficiscere, anima Christiana’: Gerontius and German mysticism

The popularity in Britain of Elgar's _The Dream of Gerontius_ was triggered by the successful reception of the work in Germany in December 1901 and May 1902. By examining some of the writings on Elgar by German critics in this period, I explain that what may have particularly have appealed to German audiences was the composer's engagement with mysticism, something that as well as being a distinct strand of German theology since medieval times had acquired a new popularity among German artists in a number of fields as part of a reaction to the materialism of Wilhelmine Germany. Through a reading of the work that takes into account both its Catholic theology and ideas of mysticism more generally, I propose that the two Parts of the work should be conceived as taking place simultaneously, rather than successively, and that the work is thus best understood as belonging to the genre of epic rather than drama. ©2013 The Royal Musical Association

Amnesties in Transition: Punishment, Restoration, and the Governance of Mercy

Despite the much vaunted triumph of human rights, amnesties continue to be a frequently used technique of post-conflict transitional justice. For many critics, they are synonymous with unaccountability and injustice. This article argues that despite the rhetoric, there is no universal duty to prosecute under international law and that issues of selectivity and proportionality present serious challenges to the retributive rationale for punishment in international justice. It contends that many of the assumptions concerning the deterrent effect in the field are also oversold and poorly theorized. It also suggests that appropriately designed restorative amnesties can be both lawful and effective as routes to truth recovery, reconciliation, and a range of other peacemaking goals. Rather than mere instruments of impunity, amnesties should instead be seen as important institutions in the governance of mercy, the reassertion of state sovereignty and, if properly constituted, the return of law to a previously lawless domain.

Specular resentment : San-Antonio, Céline and the use of proletarian rhetoric in literary criticism

The charge of »Ressentiment« can in today's world – less from traditionally conservative quarters than from the neo-positivist discourses of particular forms of liberalism – be used to undermine the argumentative credibility of political opponents, dissidents and those who call for greater »justice«. The essays in this volume draw on the broad spectrum of cultural discourse on »Ressentiment«, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Starting with its conceptual genesis, the essays also show contemporary nuances of »Ressentiment« as well as its influence on aesthetic and literary discourse in the 20th century.

Waterpower: Politics and the Geography of Water Provision

Access to potable water is frequently said to be the defining world crisis of the twenty-first century. The argument is usually framed in terms of either direct environmental constraints or various totalistic views of how the political determines outcomes. There is little or no scope for the agency of practical politics. Both physical and human geographers tend to be dismissive of the possibilities of democratic politics ever resolving crises such as those of the geography of water provision, in part because of views of scientific expertise that devalue popular participation in decisions about technical matters such as water quality and distribution. Such dismissal also has much to do with a more generalized denigration of politics. Politics (the art of political deliberation, negotiation, and compromise) needs defending against its critics and many of its practitioners. Showing how politics is at work around the world in managing water problems and identifying the challenges that water problems pose for politics provides a retort to those who can only envisage inevitable destruction or a totalistic political panacea as the outcomes of the crisis of the century.

Here I am yet cannot hold this visible shape:The Music of Gender in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Music has always been used as an important dramaturgical strategy in Western theatre to create a holistic theatrical experience. In Shakespeare’s plays, music was employed as a unique dramaturgical device for various purposes. Twelfth Night distinguishes itself from among the many plays that employ music because it begins, ends and progresses with music. Music pervades Twelfth Night and is tightly interwoven into the thematic concerns of the play such as love and gender. Because of music’s elusive nature and the difficulty of discussing a musical aesthetics, Shakespearean music critics have approached music in the play as a theme or an idea. This paper hopes to develop upon older scholarship by introducing an alternate framework of considering music’s musicality through a musicological analysis of the songs in Twelfth Night. In so doing, the paper hopes to show how and why music can modulate our responses to the play and in particular, to the theme of gender, a problematic issue that produces the elusive and darker nature of this festive comedy.

Levels and patterns of material deprivation in Ireland: After the 'Celtic tiger'

In this article we use the first full wave of the Irish component of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey to evaluate conflicting interpretations of levels and patterns of material deprivation in Ireland after the 'Celtic Tiger'. Radical critics of Irish economic policies have seen the Irish case as a particularly good illustration of the tendency for globalization to be accompanied by widespread economic vulnerability and marginalization. Here, employing a multidimensional perspective we identify one fifth of the population as being economically vulnerable and one in 14 as vulnerable to maximal deprivation, in that they exhibit high risks of deprivation across a range of life-style deprivation dimensions. Current levels and depth of material deprivation are a good deal more modest than suggested by radical critics of the Irish experience of economic globalization.

Genetic optimism:Framing genes and mental illness in the news

Over the past two decades the pace and specificity of discoveries associating genetics with mental illness has accelerated, which is reflected in an increase in news coverage about the genetics of mental disorder. The news media is a major source of public understanding of genetics and a strong influence on public discourse. This paper examines the news coverage of genetics and mental illness (i.e., bipolar illness and schizophrenia) over a 25 year period, emphasizing the peak period of 1987-1994. Using a sample of 110 news stories from 5 major American newspapers and 3 news magazines, we identify the frame of "genetic optimism" which dominated the reporting of genetics and mental illness beginning in the mid-1980s. The structure of the frame is comprised of 3 elements: a gene for the disorder exists; it will be found; and it will be good. New discoveries of genes were announced with great fanfare, but the most promising claims could not be replicated or were retracted in short order. Despite these disconfirmations, genetic optimism persisted in subsequent news stories. While the scientific accuracy of the gene stories is high, the genetic optimism frame distorts some of the findings, misrepresents and reifies the impact of genes on mental disorder, and leaves no space for critics or an examination of potential negative impacts. The stances of reporters, scientists and editors may all in different ways contribute to the perpetuation of genetic optimism. Genetic optimism presents an overly sanguine picture of the state of genetics; as we enter the genetic age it is important to balance the extraneous "hype and hope" contained in news stories of genetics and mental illness.

The Senses of Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead

When Muriel Rukeyser travelled to Gauley Bridge in 1936 to report on the industrial disaster that had led to the deaths of over 700 miners, her findings led her to write what is arguably her masterpiece – the 1938 poem series The Book of the Dead. Of all Rukeyser's writings, this hybrid work of documentary techniques and metaphors, of testimony and elegy, has attracted the most critical attention. However, analyses of the series have tended to focus on the ways in which the poet adopted and adapted documentary methods in order to offer a leftist ideological critique on capitalist-born social injustice. The purpose of this article is not to negate such readings, but to offer alongside them insight into a more ethical-philosophical approach that I believe guided Rukeyser's entire career. Via an examination of the ways in which Rukeyser employs the human senses to articulate the complexities of human political, metaphysical and social relations, this article explores the influence of the Zionist Martin Buber on the poet. Rukeyser acknowledged Buber's writings in her later work, but I contend here that they played a large part in the formation of her poetics, especially in connection with her documentary aesthetic. Whilst several critics have noted, albeit often superficially, the Marxist flavour of Rukeyser's poetry in The Book of the Dead, I argue for the influence of Buber over Marx in terms or responsibility, community and dialogue. Both Rukeyser's and Buber's methods of expressing and promoting these ethical necessities rely on a synaesthetic response to the world. Where Buber advances a dialogue between the self and alterity through transcendent personal encounter, Rukeyser locates such encounter in the poem, arguing for an exchange that leads to creation, and to personal and interpersonal growth.

Community asset transfer in Northern Ireland

Community Asset Transfer (CAT), introduced by the New Labour administration and strengthened by the Coalition, aims to provide local groups with the opportunity to own public sector facilities and related services. It is a contested concept, with critics seeing it as another strategy in welfare displacement and state disinvestment, while for others it offers communities an opportunity to acquire collateral and take control over services affecting their lives. This paper explores CAT in Northern Ireland and suggests that while there are important practices, the region lacks the policies, legislative framework and skills to develop it in more progressive and inclusive ways.

Why Northern Ireland’s Institutions Need Stability

Northern Ireland’s consociational institutions were reviewed by a committee of its Assembly in 2012–13. The arguments of both critics and exponents of the arrangements are of general interest to scholars of comparative politics, powersharing and constitutional design. The authors of this article review the debates and evidence on the d’Hondt rule of executive formation, political designation, the likely impact of changing district magnitudes for assembly elections, and existing patterns of opposition and accountability. They evaluate the scholarly, political and legal literature before commending the merits of maintaining the existing system, including the rules under which the system might be modified in future.

‘A dance for all the outcasts’: Class and Postcolonialism in Brendan Behan’s An Giall and The Hostage

As Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi argue, ‘translation does not happen in a vacuum, but in a continuum; it is not an isolated act, it is part of an ongoing process of intercultural transfer’. In understanding Brendan Behan's most celebrated and controversial translation, of his spare Irish language play An Giall (1958) to its riotous English counterpart The Hostage (1958), understanding the problematic ‘intercultural transfer’ between British and Irish life in the 1950s is crucial. Comparisons between both works reveal significant changes that illuminate Behan's relationship with both nations and provide a sometimes oblique metacommentary regarding his most pressing political and personal anxieties. Yet for all their differences, the plays also share a common desire to transcend the divisions forged by the colonial experience through critical understandings of life on either side of the Irish Sea. In this essay, I argue that Behan's act of transculturation reveals a great deal more reflexivity and depth than many of his critics would allow, developing an iconoclastic dialogue between British and Irish mid-century life.

‘Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt’: Solidarity between generations in the Irish crisis

Ireland has gained a reputation for peaceable acceptance of austerity following a European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout in 2010. While proponents of austerity praise Ireland’s stoicism, critics of global capitalism argue that individuals and families are paying for mistakes made by elites. However, little is known about the strategies people adopt to cope with cutbacks to welfare entitlements. Drawing on a study of solidarity between generations living in Ireland in 2011–12, this article explores the lived experience of economic crisis and austerity. One hundred interviews with people of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds are analysed using constructivist grounded theory. Data show how austerity impacts differentially according to socio-economic status. While solidarity between generations leads to re-distribution of resources within families, providing some security for people with access to family resources, it reinforces inequality at societal level. We conclude that reliance on family promotes ‘coping’ rather than ‘protesting’ responses to austerity.

On Not Reading Fifty Shades:Feminism and the Fantasy of Romantic Immunity

This paper explores the politics of feminist criticism of the Fifty Shades novels as seen in both traditional media commentary and popular online news and cultural websites and blogs. I argue that much media commentary, in broadsheet and other ‘respectable’ outlets particularly, has featured avowedly feminist writers dismissing the books as ‘bad’, not only containing bad writing and bad sex but, ultimately, as being bad for their women readers. Situating these responses within a history of feminist discomfort with popular erotic and romantic fiction marketed to women I read these responses as a form of ‘anti-romantic’ fantasy in which the reader/critic is able to assert both her immunity from the romantic fantasy offered in the text and her cultural distance from those women who are subject to it. Further, this act of disavowal is often linked to a professed concern for the women who read the novel who the critic argues will, inevitably, replicate the abusive and harmful relationship dynamics that the novel represent. Such a move then positions the feminist critic as not only more culturally intelligent than women readers of the novel but enacts a fantasy of respectable, middle-class feminist cultural custodianship. Such a fantasy, I argue, is connected to the post-feminist era in which we live, which has produced a class of self-appointed ‘feminist’ cultural critics who seek to contest their own cultural marginalisation through enacting a governmental authority to worry about other women. This paper, therefore, is a critical investigation of the pleasures and politics of very publicly not reading Fifty Shades and its significance for analysing the contemporary politics of popular culture and feminism.

Empowering Art: Reconfiguring narratives of trauma and hope in the Australian national imaginary

Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art critics and Aboriginal artists themselves. Early aesthetic debates about whether so-called traditional works should be considered ethnographic or artistic have led, at times, to conflicts over the rights of Aboriginal people to have their works exhibited according to the criteria applied to other kinds of Western artworks. This article explores how the dilemmas of troubled ethno-histories are critically embodied and reconfigured in texture and colour. It considers the problems that silenced histories pose for those responsible for their display to the public. As Aboriginal images often conceal troubled intercultural encounters it asks how artworks can be used to provide a counter-polemic to national rhetoric as artists seek to reshape and improve intergenerational futures. This text is published as a counterpart to the contribution to Disturbing Pasts from the artist Heather Kamarra Shearer.