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This article ethnographically analyses how groups (and not just individuals) are produced in business process outsourcing (BPO) workplaces. In order to mitigate an unstable labour pool, corporations hire deaf workers to perform identical BPO work regardless of their qualifications and backgrounds. These hiring practices serve to cement existing relationships and produce deaf workers as a group marked only by deafness. This article explores how engaging in the same work articulates with deaf young adults' 'sameness work' to produce ambivalent deaf groups. It also analyses the everyday practices of deaf employees, their relationships with their normal co‐workers who 'love' them, and the ways that value is reconfigured in the workplace through the existence of disabled workers. This article argues that in contrast to dominant representations of disabled people as unemployable, the (re)inscription of deafness as a source of multiple forms of value begs for a broader analysis of the role of disability in late capitalism.

This paper addresses several root causes of dissatisfaction with medical practice among American physicians, and suggests that some, but not all, are potentially remediable. Fixed assumptions about the nature of medical practice in the United States, developed over several decades, appear to be eroding. At the same time, increasing demands on physician time, especially involving low value documentation and administrative tasks are interfering with the physician-patient interaction. In addition, physician practice structure and payment methodologies are beginning to change in the United States leading to a sense of practice instability among physicians. Recent research conducted by the American Medical Association and the RAND Corporation has provided new qualitative and quantitative information about the impact of these trends on physician practices. An evaluation of these research findings indicates that some improvements in physician satisfaction are possible. Keywords: physician professionalism, practice satisfaction, electronic health records, health care reform in the U.S.

The development of the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine, located in Mongolia's South Gobi province, promises to rebuild the nation after two decades of economic and social instabilities following the 1990 revolution. While the company promotes the mine as the teleological solution to Mongolia's development, the state and public remain ambivalent, as concerns about a resource curse and Dutch Disease loom. In this paper, I argue that Oyu Tolgoi remains contested due to tensions between corporate and state actors as well as public concerns about the potential negative political, economic, and environmental effects of mining. Debates over the Oyu Tolgoi investment agreement negotiations and the immediate repercussions of the agreement signing reveal how the dual teleologies of building mineral nations crystallize in the neologism "Mine-golia." This paper begins to fill a gap in the literature on mineral nations which privileges the role of the state, leaving how corporations engage in nation-building underexamined.

In recent years, there has been a panoply of new forms of 'social' government, as manifest in 'social enterprise' and 'social media'. This follows an era of neoliberalism in which social logics were apparently being eliminated, through the expansion of economic rationalities. To understand this, the article explores the critique of the very notion of the 'social', as manifest in neoliberal contributions to the socialist calculation debate from the 1920s onwards. Understood as a zone lying between market and state, the social was accused by Mises and Hayek of being both unaccountable (lacking any units of measurement) and formless (lacking instruments of explication). The article then asks to what extent these critiques still retain their purchase, following recent developments in hedonic measurement and data analytics. The argument is made that new post-neoliberal forms of 'social government' may now be entirely plausible, though focusing on the corporation rather than the state.

In large Chinese corporations operating in the Greater China region, there is an increasing use of web-based bilingual messages by their corporate leaders for fostering relationships with stakeholders. Although frequently presented as literal translations of each other, leaders' bilingual communication sometimes tends to exhibit nonliteral variations. This study aims to examine the relational dialectics theory in the construction of leader-stakeholder relationships in leaders' bilingual web-based messages and explores the dialectical oppositions that are embedded in the Chinese and English versions of these messages. The results suggest that leaders' communication is characterized by the deliberate use of different dialectics that allow them to tailor their communication to the perceived needs of stakeholders from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In particular, the Chinese version of the message is adapted to exude greater connection, openness, affection, and predictability in content as well as style, which is believed to strengthen relationships with stakeholders.

How can activists and policy makers encourage better environmental behavior in a context of poor governmental enforcement? This article examines the case of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs, a Chinese nonprofit organization, to show how a transparency-based platform can encourage brand-sensitive multinational corporations, their suppliers, their investors, local governments, and consumers to behave in more environmentally responsible ways, even in a context of low governmental enforcement. Using Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs as its model, this article argues that a transparency-based platform can serve an important coordinating function across multiple sectors, creating a mechanism through which market forces are channeled in pro-environmental ways. Transparency-based platforms can help develop new norms about public disclosure, corporate governance, and consumer responsibility, but they only function in places with sufficient state monitoring capacity, adequate legal protections, and in markets where local firms are vulnerable to external financial pressure.

We argue that while Multilateral Development Banks ("MDBs") and national governments have mechanisms to fight corruption, the objectives and outcomes of these enforcement mechanisms diverge. MDBs are interested in the causes and effects of corruption from a development perspective and, as such, tend to sanction small and medium enterprises and individuals, while national governments are focused on a more punitive outcome, targeting larger multinational corporations. This article examines the enforcement objectives articulated in national legislation, namely the US Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act and its Canadian counterpart, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, as well as several Canadian cases, on the one hand, and the tools and outcomes of MDBs' sanctions systems on the other. We conclude that national enforcement efforts and MDBs' sanctions outcomes intersect in their fight against international corruption in that their results are complementary; the former punishing large-scale offenders while the latter ensuring the integrity of development projects.

In this article we explore whether South Korea's long-standing tradition of economic nationalism remains an appropriate development strategy, or whether this approach has been rendered irrelevant by the current wave of neoliberal globalization led by multinational corporations. We examine the changed economic agendas of each Korean regime, with a particular focus on national identity and economic nationalism, mobilized and implemented by the state. We argue that, despite the rapid development of globalization and cosmopolitanism in South Korea, economic nationalism is still prevalent. Korea's adoption of neoliberal economic activities, such as lifting trade barriers to encourage the inflow of foreign direct investment, was necessary to assist certain areas of the economy. Furthermore, changing the direction of the growth trajectory remains subordinate to the goal of state building. Empirical analysis of results collected from survey data and one-on-one interviews conducted in 2010 help to validate our hypothesis. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

The article gives an overview of the evolution of economic theories, the conditions which led to the formation of their modern schools and focuses on the analysis of arising classic, neoclassic and Keynesian doctrines encouraged by the growth and development of productive forces (factors of production), the formation of big corporations-monopolists and technological progress. The severe global recessions (1929-1933) and other shocks of the capitalist system brought to life the doctrinal theory, which is alternative to the classical one. The doctrinal theory was a theoretic and methodological basis of the System for half a century, then it was replaced by neoliberal and monetarist theories that proved to be inconsistent during the global crisis and depression in 2008-2013. The article also touches upon the necessity to change the economic policy of Russia - an urgent problem resulting from a policy of the Western countries trying to suffocate the country with sanctions.

This article takes a historical perspective about the possibility of democratic grassroots trade union representation in Chinese factories. It documents previous trade union elections at supplier factories of multinational corporations (MNCs), from the first election organised by Reebok in 2001 at a supplier factory in Shenzhen to a recent election instigated by workers. For a decade and a half, a number of high-profile union elections were variously organised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on behalf of MNCs, or by the Chinese trade union, or by workers. The article examines the political and social contexts in which these elections took place, the problems encountered by the newly elected trade union branches, their successes and failures, and how these elections prompted China's trade union federation to hold similar elections at domestically owned Chinese factories. It concludes with an analysis of the current labour scene in China and the prospects of genuine collective bargaining. (China/GIGA)

At present, Mexico makes an ambitious attempt to carry out far-reaching structural reforms. Of key importance is the reform in the energy sector which is the foundation of the national economy. The reform course of the Mexican authorities and the matrix of their political actions deserve scrutiny, since their value transcends national boundaries, reflects problems inherent in many developing countries paving the way in shifting sands of global economic relations. Mexico seeks to seamlessly combine the politics of the energy sector reform with pragmatic interests of transnational corporations willing a broader access to Mexico's oil and gas resources. This is one of international aspects of the energy reform in Mexico. Another one is that using reforms Mexican authorities yearn to strengthen Mexico's geopolitical role, confirm its status of a rising power. Acknowledgement. The article has been supported by a grant of the Russian Science Foundation. Project № 14-18-02713.

В настоящей статье автор рассматривает институт непубличных корпораций в России. В статье уделено внимание поиску его исторических корней в российской правовой действительности и определению современных тенденций развития. Автор приходит к выводу, что данный институт не является чуждым российскому праву. Новая систематизация законодательства о юридических лицах является, по сути, корпоративной политикой, позволяющей малому и среднему бизнесу учитывать коммерческие интересы, преобладании диспозитивного начала в регулировании непубличных корпорацийIn this article, the author addressed the area of non-public joint-stock companies. The article pays attention to search of its historical roots in the Russian legal reality and to definition of current trends of development. The author comes to a conclusion that this institute isn't alien to Russian law. New systematization of the legal entities legislation is, in fact, the corporate policy allowing small and medium business to consider commercial interests, prevalence of the dispositive beginning in regulation of nonpublic corporations

Civil society organizations (CSOs) attempt to induce corporations to behave in more socially responsible ways, with a view to raising labour standards. A broader way of conceptualizing their efforts to influence the policies and practices of employers is desirable, one centred upon the concept of civil governance. This recognizes that CSOs not only attempt to shape the behaviour of employers through the forging of direct, collaborative relationships, but also try to do so indirectly, with interactions of various kinds with the state being integral. Drawing on evidence derived from UK-based CSOs involved in work and employment relations, four types of civil governance are identified and characterized. By elaborating the concept of civil governance, and demonstrating how different types of civil governance operate, the research extends our knowledge and understanding of how CSOs, as increasingly prominent actors in the field of work and employment relations, operate within, and contribute to, systems of labour governance.

One of the most important developments in the modern global economy is financial globalization. This has raised threats to the stability of political regimes in two ways: (1) by enhancing the possibility of a financial crisis that could cause political turmoil; and (2) by easing access to foreign sources of financing for opposition political groups. I argue that state capitalism – defined as state-owned publicly listed corporations – is greater among one-party regimes as a way to address these dual threats. One-party regimes have both the motivation and a greater institutional capacity for addressing these threats in comparison to other regimes. Tests are conducted on 607 firms in 1996 and 856 firms in 2008 across seven East Asian economies, and are supplemented with case studies of Malaysia and South Korea. The evidence suggests that financial globalization is contributing to the rise of the state as a counter reaction.

One of the most important developments in the modern global economy is financial globalization. This has raised threats to the stability of political regimes in two ways: (1) by enhancing the possibility of a financial crisis that could cause political turmoil; and (2) by easing access to foreign sources of financing for opposition political groups. I argue that state capitalism – defined as state-owned publicly listed corporations – is greater among one-party regimes as a way to address these dual threats. One-party regimes have both the motivation and a greater institutional capacity for addressing these threats in comparison to other regimes. Tests are conducted on 607 firms in 1996 and 856 firms in 2008 across seven East Asian economies, and are supplemented with case studies of Malaysia and South Korea. The evidence suggests that financial globalization is contributing to the rise of the state as a counter reaction.