No / This study examines the impact of FTSE 100 index revisions on the informational efficiency of the underlying stocks. Our study spans the 1986–2009 period. We estimate the speed of price adjustment and price inefficiency from the partial adjustment with noise model of Amihud and Mendelson (1987). We report a significant improvement (no change) in the informational efficiency of the stocks added to (deleted from) the FTSE 100 index. The asymmetric effect of additions and deletions on informational efficiency can be attributed, at least partly, to certain aspects of liquidity and other fundamental characteristics, which improve following additions but do not diminish after deletions. Cross-sectional analysis also indicates that stocks with low pre-addition market quality benefit more from joining the index.

No / We suggest in this paper that whilst exploring how to make business schools more critical we must also turn a critical and reflexive lens upon ourselves, critical management thinkers. Our endeavour is outlined here as a ‘reflexive journey’ in which we turn upon ourselves, academics who identify as ‘critical’ thinkers, the theories we use to analyse others. Our focus is upon critical management education. We use three vignettes drawn from our previous research. One is of graduands from the postgraduate programmes on which two of us teach, the second an analysis of knowledge transfer programmes in which we have participated, and the third a study of the construction of academic identities. The first study shows the academic teacher may become an internalized, judgemental gaze, the second that what we see as a critical approach may be construed by our students as another ‘truth’ that fails to encompass the complexities of organizations and management, and the third encourages us to ask some questions about our own positions. This causes us to ask some uncomfortable questions about our own positions as critical management scholars and the ways in which we conceptualize business schools and our colleagues who work in them.

No / Enterprise strategies, governance structure and performance: a comparative study of global integration, Regional Studies. This paper is positioned within a voluminous body of literature exploring the processes of global integration. The research presented here broadens the scope of scholarly inquiry through a process of constructive and critical engagement with the Global Commodity and Value Chain approaches. This is achieved by focusing on the enterprise as a purposive agent that is contextualized in chains and localities; and exploring the broad spectrum of strategies that can result to robust performance. This argument is supported with the findings of a survey of 755 firms in the United Kingdom, Greece, Poland, Estonia, and Bulgaria.

No / Baumol's hypothesis, i.e. that the allocation of entrepreneurial talent in productive, unproductive and destructive activities is determined by the rules of the game, is supported by a growing body of empirical research and underpins new avenues of research in entrepreneurial studies. However, Baumol's paper offers precious few insights, beyond policy action, regarding how change to the rules of the game can be effected, because it views institutions as endogenous. This paper sets out to address this gap through an extension of Schumpeterian–Baumolian construct. The paper argues that changing institutions is a contestable process: its outcome determined by the complex nexus of interests and power endowments of actors. Changing the outcome of this contestation is dependent on the emergence of new entrepreneurial groupings and/or the evolution of the power endowments or interests of existing ones. Two historical illustrations are used to support the hypothesis and of this study.

No / A recent paper in Accounting and Business Research by Lau et al. (2008) offers systematic evidence to explain whether managers’ perceptions on fairness of performance evaluation procedures affect attitudes such as job satisfaction; and if it does, the different behavioural processes involved. Our paper re‐examines Lau et al.’s model and hypotheses to assess the external validity of their findings, based on a very different sample of managers. Drawing on recent organisational justice literature, it further develops the model and examines the potential interaction effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures and other variables on job satisfaction. Finally, it extends the outcome variable to include manager performance. Using survey responses from 165 managers, supported by 24 interviews, drawn from three major organisations in the manufacturing and financial services sectors, we find that Lau et al.’s results on the indirect effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures on job satisfaction are generalisable to other organisational settings and managerial levels. However, using their model we do not find support for the outcome‐based effects through distributive fairness. Developing a revised model we observe that the effects of distributive fairness on job satisfaction are indirect via organisational commitment. When the model is further developed to incorporate performance as the outcome variable, we observe similar findings.

Yes / Aims: The rapidly growing industrial and medical use of nanomaterials, especially zinc oxide and titanium dioxide, has led to growing concerns about their toxicity. Accordingly, the intrinsic genotoxic and cytotoxic potential of these nanoparticles have been evaluated. Materials & methods: Using a HEp-2 cell line, cytotoxicity was tested along with mitochondrial activity and neutral red uptake assays. The genotoxic potential was determined using the Comet and the cytokinesis-blocked micronucleus assays. In addition,tyrosine phosphorylation events were investigated. Results & conclusion: We found concentration- and time-dependent cytotoxicity and an increase in DNA and cytogenetic damage with increasing nanoparticle concentrations. Mainly for zinc oxide, genotoxicity was clearly associated with an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation. Our results suggest that both types of nanoparticles can be genotoxic over a range of concentrations without being cytotoxic. / Embargo ended 3/11/ 2011

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No / Synthesis of a melatonin agonist for treatment of sleep disorders produced a pair of enantiomers, of which one is biologically active. Two polymorphs were discovered using the inactive enantiomer, conserving the active enantiomer for toxicological testing. Later studies with the active enantiomer yielded only the metastable form, despite more than 1000 attempts to isolate the stable form. The difficulty is surprising, since the stable form is favored by 0.7 kcal mol–1, which is toward the extreme for stability differences between organic polymorphs. Study of individual enantiomers allowed the phase behavior of polymorphs of greatly different energy to be examined without interconversion. A number of unusual features are noted. After the stable polymorph of the inactive enantiomer was nucleated, the metastable form became very difficult to isolate. The metastable form converts into a less soluble monohydrate structure in water, whereas the stable polymorph does not due to its reduced activity. Both chiral polymorphs are denser than the racemic crystalline form at low temperature, the stable form being at the extreme for chiral-racemic pairs. Free energy-temperature relations predict “spontaneous resolution” of the racemic crystalline form into a conglomerate mixture of stable polymorph at low temperature. The unusual characteristics of the system are explained by hydrogen bonding and conformational flexibility of the molecule. Ab initio calculations aid in understanding the relative contributions of these interactions to the lattice energies and the role that conformational energy differences play in the polymorphic stability. This system highlights the importance of the creation of the very first nuclei of a crystalline form. The reluctance of the stable form to nucleate is attributed to a large energy difference between polymorphic forms. The large interfacial tension for primary nucleation reduces the probability of forming clusters of size sufficient for favorable growth in the absence of heterogeneous nucleation. This study highlights how nucleation of a new form can revise the readily “accessible” region of a compound’s crystal form landscape.

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