A structuration theory perspective on the institutional change in Higher Education sector

Budgeting system has been traditionally viewed as a control mechanism rather than a communication tool to facilitate the institutionalisation of organisational change. A good budgeting system not only reflects the organisational reality but also socially constructs the reality. This paper uses the structuration perspective to understand budget-related behaviour in a UK research-intensive university and especially, study the role of budgeting system in achieving organisational sustainability. Giddens’ structuration theory offers a valuable framework for the study of the duality of structure and emphasises on the structural properties of social systems. Based on the semi-structured interviews with top management and budget holders, it is concluded that in this specific context, budgeting system may place a significant role in establishing and legitimising institutional change.

Procedural justice in procurement management and inclusive interorganizational relations: an institutional perspective

This paper applies the concept of procedural justice to one of the most important focal points of interorganizational relations: the purchaser–supplier relationship. The few extant studies of the concept in the purchaser–supplier domain have overlooked an important aspect of this key relationship: that is, inclusiveness in procurement. This is despite the fact that interest in the specific empirical context of supply chain links between large purchasing organizations (LPOs) and ethnic minority suppliers (EMSs) from disadvantaged communities proceeds apace on both sides of the Atlantic. Institutional theory is used to examine the form that procedural justice takes in eight case studies of LPOs from the private and public sectors, which actively engage with inclusive procurement management initiatives in England. The guiding question is twofold: ‘What may LPO approaches to installing procedural justice in procurement management entail?’ and ‘How are these approaches shaped?’ This paper identifies specific approaches to installing procedural justice for inclusive procurement and submits theoretical propositions about how these are shaped. The study contributes to a macro-level assessment of procedural justice, i.e. interorganizational procedural justice, as a significant aspect of inclusive interorganizational relationships, which is a domain in need of theoretical development.

Can institutional investors bias real estate portfolio appraisals? Evidence from the market downturn

This paper investigates the extent to which institutional investors may have influenced independent real estate appraisals during the financial crisis. A conceptual model of the determinants of client influence on real estate appraisals is proposed. It is suggested that the extent of clients’ ability and willingness to bias appraisal outputs is contingent upon market and regulatory environments (ethical norms and legal and institutional frameworks), the salience of the appraisal(s) to the client, financial incentives for the appraiser to respond to client pressure, organisational culture, the level of moral reasoning of both individual clients and appraisers, client knowledge and the degree of appraisal uncertainty. The potential of client influence to bias ostensibly independent real estate appraisals is examined using the opportunity afforded by the market downturn commencing in 2007 in the UK. During the market turbulence at the end of 2007, the motivations of different types of owners to bias appraisals diverged clearly and temporarily provided a unique opportunity to assess potential appraisal bias. We use appraisal-based performance data for individual real estate assets to test whether there were significant ownership effects on performance during this period. The results support the hypothesis that real estate appraisals in this period reflected the differing needs of clients.

Liquidity review: dimensions, causes, measures and empirical applications in real estate markets

Liquidity is a fundamentally important facet of investments, but there is no single measure that quantifies it perfectly. Instead, a range of measures are necessary to capture different dimensions of liquidity such as the breadth and depth of markets, the costs of transacting, the speed with which transactions can occur and the resilience of prices to trading activity. This article considers how different dimensions have been measured in financial markets and for various forms of real estate investment. The purpose of this exercise is to establish the range of liquidity measures that could be used for real estate investments before considering which measures and questions have been investigated so far. Most measures reviewed here are applicable to public real estate, but not all can be applied to private real estate assets or funds. Use of a broader range of liquidity measures could help real estate researchers tackle issues such as quantification of illiquidity premiums for the real estate asset class or different types of real estate, and how liquidity differences might be incorporated into portfolio allocation models.

Institutional legacies and capabilities: work practices and employment relations in Portugal and Mozambique

This is a study of institutional change and continuity, comparing the trajectories followed by Mozambique and its formal colonial power Portugal in HRM, based on two surveys of firm level practices. The colonial power sought to extend the institutions of the metropole in the closing years of its rule, and despite all the adjustments and shocks that have accompanied Mozambique’s post-independence years, the country continues to retain institutional features and associated practices from the past. This suggests that there is a post-colonial impact on human resource management. The implications for HRM theory are that ambitious attempts at institutional substitution may have less dramatic effects than is commonly assumed. Indeed, we encountered remarkable similarities between the two countries in HRM practices, implying that features of supposedly fluid or less mature institutional frameworks (whether in Africa or the Mediterranean world) may be sustained for protracted periods of time, pressures to reform notwithstanding. This highlights the complexities of continuities which transcend formal rules; as post-colonial theories alert us, informal conventions and embedded discourse may result in the persistence of informal power and subordination, despite political and legal changes.

Institutional investors: arbitrageurs or rational trend chasers?

This paper studies the relationship between institutional investor holdings and stock misvaluation in the U.S. between 1980 and 2010. I find that institutional investors overweigh overvalued and underweigh undervalued stocks in their portfolio, taking the market portfolio as a benchmark. Cross-sectionally, institutional investors hold more overvalued stocks than undervalued stocks. The time-series studies also show that institutional ownership of overvalued portfolios increases as the portfolios' degree of overvaluation. As an investment strategy, institutional investors' ride of stock misvaluation is neither driven by the fund flows from individual investors into institutions, nor industry-specific. Consistent with the agency problem explanation, investment companies and independent investment advisors have a higher tendency to ride stock misvaluation than other institutions. There is weak evidence that institutional investors make positive profit by riding stock misvaluation. My findings challenge the models that view individual investors as noise traders and disregard the role of institutional investors in stock market misvaluation.

Objective Assessment of Internal Nasal Dimensions and Speech Resonance in Individuals With Repaired Unilateral Cleft Lip and Palate After Rhinoseptoplasty

The objective of the current study was to analyze the effects of rhinoseptoplasty on internal nasal dimensions and speech resonance of individuals with unilateral cleft lip and palate, estimated by acoustic rhinometry and nasometry, respectively. Twenty-one individuals (aged 15-46 years) with previously repaired unilateral cleft lip and palate were analyzed before (PRE), and 6 to 9 (POST1) and 12 to 18 months (POST2) after surgery. Acoustic rhinometry was used to measure the cross-sectional areas (CSAs) of segments corresponding to the nasal valve (CSA1), anterior portion (CSA2), and posterior portion (CSA3) of the lower turbinate, and the volumes at the nasal valve (V1) and turbinate (V2) regions at cleft and noncleft sides, before and after nasal decongestion with a topical vasoconstrictor. Nasometry was used to evaluate speech nasalance during the reading of a set of sentences containing nasal sounds and other devoid of nasal sounds. At the cleft side, before nasal decongestion, there was a significant increase (P < 0.05) in mean CSA1 and V1 values at POST1 and POST2 compared with PRE. After decongestion, increased values were also observed for CSA2 and V2 at POST2. No significant changes were observed at the noncleft side. Mean nasalance values at PRE, POST1, an POST2 were not different from each other in both oral and nasal sentences. The measurement of CSAs and volumes by acoustic rhinometry revealed that rhinoseptoplasty provided, in most cases analyzed, a significant increase in nasal patency, without concomitant changes in speech resonance, as estimated by nasalance assessment.

THE VORONOI TESSELLATION CLUSTER FINDER IN 2+1 DIMENSIONS

We present a detailed description of the Voronoi Tessellation (VT) cluster finder algorithm in 2+1 dimensions, which improves on past implementations of this technique. The need for cluster finder algorithms able to produce reliable cluster catalogs up to redshift 1 or beyond and down to 10(13.5) solar masses is paramount especially in light of upcoming surveys aiming at cosmological constraints from galaxy cluster number counts. We build the VT in photometric redshift shells and use the two-point correlation function of the galaxies in the field to both determine the density threshold for detection of cluster candidates and to establish their significance. This allows us to detect clusters in a self-consistent way without any assumptions about their astrophysical properties. We apply the VT to mock catalogs which extend to redshift 1.4 reproducing the ACDM cosmology and the clustering properties observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. An objective estimate of the cluster selection function in terms of the completeness and purity as a function of mass and redshift is as important as having a reliable cluster finder. We measure these quantities by matching the VT cluster catalog with the mock truth table. We show that the VT can produce a cluster catalog with completeness and purity > 80% for the redshift range up to similar to 1 and mass range down to similar to 10(13.5) solar masses.

Topological interactions in warped extra dimensions

Topological interactions will be generated in theories with compact extra dimensions where fermionic chiral zero modes have different localizations. This is the case in many warped extra dimension models where the right-handed top quark is typically localized away from the left-handed one. Using deconstruction techniques, we study the topological interactions in these models. These interactions appear as trilinear and quadrilinear gauge boson couplings in low energy effective theories with three or more sites, as well as in the continuum limit. We derive the form of these interactions for various cases, including examples of Abelian, non-Abelian and product gauge groups of phenomenological interest. The topological interactions provide a window into the more fundamental aspects of these theories and could result in unique signatures at the Large Hadron Collider, some of which we explore.

On the superfield effective potential in three dimensions

We develop the superfield approach to the effective potential in three dimensions and calculate the one-loop and two-loop Kahlerian effective potential in commutative and noncommutative cases. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Concentric characterization and classification of complex network nodes: Application to an institutional collaboration network

Differently from theoretical scale-free networks, most real networks present multi-scale behavior, with nodes structured in different types of functional groups and communities. While the majority of approaches for classification of nodes in a complex network has relied on local measurements of the topology/connectivity around each node, valuable information about node functionality can be obtained by concentric (or hierarchical) measurements. This paper extends previous methodologies based on concentric measurements, by studying the possibility of using agglomerative clustering methods, in order to obtain a set of functional groups of nodes, considering particular institutional collaboration network nodes, including various known communities (departments of the University of Sao Paulo). Among the interesting obtained findings, we emphasize the scale-free nature of the network obtained, as well as identification of different patterns of authorship emerging from different areas (e.g. human and exact sciences). Another interesting result concerns the relatively uniform distribution of hubs along concentric levels, contrariwise to the non-uniform pattern found in theoretical scale-free networks such as the BA model. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On the lower bound on the exchange-correlation energy in two dimensions

We study the properties of the lower bound on the exchange-correlation energy in two dimensions. First we review the derivation of the bound and show how it can be written in a simple density-functional form. This form allows an explicit determination of the prefactor of the bound and testing its tightness. Next we focus on finite two-dimensional systems and examine how their distance from the bound depends on the system geometry. The results for the high-density limit suggest that a finite system that comes as close as possible to the ultimate bound on the exchange-correlation energy has circular geometry and a weak confining potential with a negative curvature. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Minimizing the object dimensions in circle and sphere packing problems

Given a fixed set of identical or different-sized circular items, the problem we deal with consists on finding the smallest object within which the items can be packed. Circular, triangular, squared, rectangular and also strip objects are considered. Moreover, 2D and 3D problems are treated. Twice-differentiable models for all these problems are presented. A strategy to reduce the complexity of evaluating the models is employed and, as a consequence, instances with a large number of items can be considered. Numerical experiments show the flexibility and reliability of the new unified approach. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.