Suchergebnisse

Financial advisors, poker players, hedge fund traders, fund-raisers, sports agents, credit counsellors and commissioned salespeople all deal with one central concern in their jobs: money. In Money At Work, Kevin Delaney explores how we think about money and, particularly, how our jobs influence that thinking. By spotlighting people for whom money is the focus of their work, Delaney illuminates how the daily practices experienced in different jobs create distinct ways of thinking and talking about money and how occupations and their work cultures carry important symbolic, material, and practica.

AbstractThis article discusses the challenges and opportunities encountered in interviewing organizational elites. Drawing on a wide range of experiences in elite interviewing, I offer suggestions for gaining access to elites, controlling the interview, obtaining the highest‐quality interview data, and writing effectively about those data. I also discuss the 'dilemma of seduction' that can occur in elite interviewing and suggests ways to both present and critique the worldview of elites when writing about qualitative interviews.

Annual student essay competition endowed by Philip L. Carret aimed at having Elon University students reflect on the ideals and principles embodied in Thomas Jefferson's life and career. Top four prize-winning student essays from the competition based on the following topic: Scholars have written a great deal about Thomas Jefferson's tortured thinking about race and the nature of racial difference in recent years. But Jefferson was not the only one who wrestled with these questions. During the Jeffersonian era (1770-1840) Americans debated the meaning of race in statehouses, churches, and newspapers across the country. How did Americans' ideas about race and ethnicity inform other important questions in the Jeffersonian era? How did their ideas, for example, shape the discussion of issues like slavery, Indian policy, expansion, or national identity?

This article explores the connection between bankruptcy and organizational failure, arguing that the two have grown increasingly distinct in the world of large corporate bankruptcy. In some bankruptcy cases, the filing of a Chapter 11 petition has very little to do with organizational failure in the strictest sense but instead signals a change in organizational strategy by corporate management or institutional creditors. This article suggests viewing bankruptcy as a specialized organizational field that offers significant advantages to corporations facing complex dilemmas. As a highly structured organizational field, bankruptcy favors repeat players, privileges financial epistemologies over other forms of knowledge, transforms threatening stakeholder interests into more familiar creditor claims, and channels larger political disputes into narrower financial disputing frameworks.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy provides an opportunity for addressing issues of power and control during corporate crisis. A broad notion of power is essential in understanding the complex events that led to the Chapter 11 filing of the Manville Corporation, formerly the nation's leading asbestos manufacturer. The theory of finance hegemony places this case in an entirely new light by taking into account the power of the financial community. The Manville bankruptcy illuminates several mechanisms by which this hegemony operates. From this perspective, Chapter 11 bankruptcy is viewed as a choice made from a set of options severely constrained by other powerful institutions, rather than a result of managerial incompetence or market failure.

This article empirically investigates media coverage of 23 publicly financed stadium projects in 16 U.S. cities. Typically, media coverage uncritically supports these initiatives but, occasionally, it offers a far more critical view. In addition, the media in many cities take a "hybrid" approach, which is neither completely critical nor uncritical of these projects. The authors contend that media approaches matter a great deal in helping or hindering a stadium initiative. However, this impact is highly dependent on the unity and strength of the city's local growth coalition, which usually develops and champions these projects. A relatively critical media can seriously impede a stadium project, but only when the local growth coalition is weak or fragmented. Conversely, an uncritical media often becomes the primary institutional booster of stadium projects in cities with a weak growth coalition.

Sports economists have created a sizable literature on the costs and benefits of publicly funded major-league sports stadiums. This research suggests a growing consensus that stadiums provide little economic advantage for local communities. In response, some stadium supporters have modified their tactics to increasingly avoid claims of tangible economic benefits. Instead, they insist that new stadiums offer communities more intangible social benefits. These alleged intangible benefits can take many specific forms but usually have something to do with a community's self esteem or its collective conscience. This article draws on the authors' primary research in 10 U.S. cities that are involved in different stages of new stadium construction. The authors demonstrate how local elites socially construct ideas such as community self-esteem and community collective conscience to help them reap large amounts of public dollars for their private stadiums.

Trash talking has been the subject of considerable social commentary and criticism in the past few years. Media constructions of the phenomenon claim that it has filtered down from the world of professional sport and now influences the conduct of young athletes. We use an empirical study of high-school basketball players to show that in order to be more fully understood, trash talking needs to be connected with `insult talk', which preceded the former. We document the factors that help insult talk flourish at Hardwick High and argue that trash talking is a more complex phenomenon than is usually presented in media portrayals.