稻盛哲学对话〔连载一〕

这里译介的是作家加藤胜美与企业家稻盛和夫的对话。在轻松自然的气氛中 ,稻盛和夫从“孩子王时代”的琐事 ,谈到松风工业“修行”的岁月 ;从创立京瓷公司的前前后后 ,谈到第二电电的创建。不仅有助于我们了解稻盛和夫艰辛而充满创造快乐的创业道路 ,独特的经营理念、经营战略的形成过程 ,也可以让我们真切地感受到一个优秀企业领导者的所想与谈吐的个人风格。     

论中亚摩尼教、基督教、佛教之关系——评《丝绸之路上基督教、诺斯替教和佛教之碰撞》

本文作者通过对克林凯特《丝绸之路上基督教、诺斯替教和佛教之碰撞》一书进行了详细的研究和评论,使我们了解到该书作者对世界三大宗教之间关系的精辟认识,进而又对摩尼教、基督教和佛教之间的关系进行了详尽的阐述,是一篇不可多得的书评.     

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TRAVEL: SOME EXPLORATIONS

International business travel is now an omnipresent feature of working life for many millions of people around the globe. Whatever the organizational reason, it is now the likelihood that many individuals are engaged in undertaking work outside of the formal workplace in an irregular pattern which has become an almost ordinary aspect of their working-life. Such is the magnitude of international business travel that it is now highly significant for bringing multi-million dollar expenditure to countries and the global airline and hotel sectors, and supporting an international business travel management industry. Yet, surprisingly, little has been written on the agency of international business travel, beyond vignettes of the organizational requirement for physical proximity. In this introduction (and special issue) we consider what further academic analyses of business travel must do to extend knowledge and understanding of the growth and use of travel in the twenty-first century. The article is in five parts. First, we consider the function of international business travel in firms as part of strategies to tie-together spatially distributed subsidiaries. Second, we unpack the modes and spaces of business travel. Third, we discuss the impacts of business travel on both the traveller, but also the environment. Fourth, we introduce the major arguments and contributions of the four articles in this special issue. Finally, we identify future research agendas that should develop existing theory and understanding of the compulsion for international business travel.     

EXPLORING THE CONNECTIONS: LAND TENURE, SOCIAL IDENTITIES, AND AGROBIODIVERSITY PRACTICES IN GHANA

This article employs qualitative and quantitative evidence from primary social research in Ghana to examine the link between land tenure security and social identities (of wealth/income and gender), and how they condition farmers' investments in practices that contribute to the rehabilitation of tree biodiversity (agrobiodiversity). Statistical analyses of the significance of the effects of farmers' de jure land tenure security regimes, and income and gender on agrobiodiversity practices were inconclusive. The conventional causation link between investments and more secure formal land tenure rights, for instance, was confirmed in investments in four out of eight agrobiodiversity practices. Testimonial-based evidence of farmers provided a clearer concept of land tenure security and an explanatory framework about the interacting and complex effects of income and gender on land tenure security. The theoretical and empirical argument developed from these testimonies portrays land tenure as embodying negotiated social processes, influenced by gender and income of individuals, whereby breadth of land rights, duration of rights over land, and assurance of rights are established, sustained, enhanced or changed through a variety of strategies to shape tenure security. These processes – tenure building and renewal processes – are critical because all farmers have lingering anxiety about land tenure rights, even among farmers with more secure formal rights. Investments are made in agrobiodiversity practices as a strategy to strengthen land tenure security and thereby minimize anxiety, leading to reverse causation effects between land tenure, social identities, and investments.     

POTENTIALS FOR MIGRATION AND MOBILITY AMONG OIL WORKERS IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH

High population mobility, mainly in the form of out-migration, is a characteristic feature of the post-Soviet Russian North. As subsidies from the centre were significantly cut, living standards and the number of inhabitants in many Russian peripheries declined considerably. Nevertheless, there are also prospering regions and industry sectors in these parts of Russia, which are often related to and dependent on the exploitation of natural resources. After introducing general Soviet and post-Soviet mobility and migration patterns in the north of Russia, this article examines the mobility behaviour of oil workers. The analyses are based on a case study of an oil company (SeverTEK) from the Komi Republic and incorporate different statistical approaches. The purpose of the study is to assess past, present and future mobility behaviour of those in northern regions who are benefitting from post-Soviet transition and will most likely contribute most to a positive development of the Russian North. The results show that the surveyed employees of SeverTEK have migrated in the past mainly from Siberia, the Far East, and the now independent countries of the former Soviet Union to northern and central parts of European Russia. The present mobility behaviour is strongly characteristic of shift work employment with long-distance commuting. An analysis of intended migration indentifies strong potentials for future migrations among the oil workers of the case study. It appears that many employees are ready to leave northern regions as soon as their job situation allows it. Therefore, unlike in other resource peripheries such as Western Australia, long-distance commuting is in Russia not used as a decentralization measure; instead it offers opportunities for reducing the problematically high population density of the post-Soviet North.     

THE CO-PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE IN AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY: AN ANALYSIS OF CINCINNATI, OHIO, IN TURMOIL

In April 2001 Cincinnati, Ohio, erupted into violence and protracted unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed African‐American named Timothy Thomas. African‐American interest groups in the city subsequently organized an economic boycott of downtown businesses. In response to the demonstration and the boycott, the Cincinnati government issued a marketing campaign entitled ‘We're On the Move!’, intending to give nod to past failures and launch forward movement on their part. In this article I investigate the entirety of these events as narrative moments under the auspices of urban entrepreneurialism to answer the question: How does the local population inform, rather than simply mediate, the narrative administration of an urban entrepreneurial form of governance? I then turn to a response to the campaign by an African‐American newspaper columnist in Cincinnati to underscore a dialogic relationship between an entrepreneurial city and its citizens as it forms the presentation of entrepreneurialism. In turn, this conception allows for a more nuanced version of entrepreneurial governance more generally.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS TRAVEL FOR INDUSTRIAL CLUSTERS – MAKING SENSE OF NOMADIC WORKERS

This article uses research on business air travel to study the external linkages of clusters. Using a typology of travellers (from commuters, explorers, and nomads to visiting tradesmen and missionaries) we show how elements of the cluster have more complex external connections than proposed by most of the cluster research literature. Maintaining these linkages involves hyper-mobility of individuals. We explore the implications of such continued physical travel for understandings of the workplace, for work-life balance and for citizenship. We conclude by warning against any one-dimensional understanding of the relationships.     

'GOOD' AND 'REAL' PLACES: A GEOGRAPHICAL-MORAL CRITIQUE OF TERRITORIAL PLACE-MAKING

As a spatial strategy to control people by controlling access to space, gated communities are territorial place-making devices par excellence. While gated communities often conjure up images of extreme urban inequality and social–spatial segregation, relatively few works have actually engaged in more normative analysis and debates on these contentious urban forms. Addressing this lacuna, this paper will critically examine the geographical-moral dimensions of gated communities by adopting Sack's (2003) theoretical framework on 'good' and 'real' places. Specifically, the paper seeks to underscore the geographical-moral significance of place by considering gated communities as a key site for the critical reflection on the moral content of urban development driven by ideologies of privatism and neoliberal market logic.