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This section presents abstracts of conference papers about management history. Some of the papers include "History, Ownership Forms and Corporate Governance Systems: A Study of the Indian Context," about the evolution of ownership and corporate governance in India, "Charisma Revisited," regarding the historical roles of charismatic leaders in organizations, and "The Times They Are A-Changin': Transformation in the Popular Music Industry - An Evolutionary View," about organizational change in the music recording industry.

The article presents abstracts of conference papers concerning research methods. "The Legitimacy of Messiness: Interdisciplinary Research and Interorganizational Relationships," investigates interorganizational relationships. "Playing the Scales: Learning to be a Qualitative Researcher," parallels learning to play a musical instrument to the process of learning research skills. "Integrating Action Research Methods: Contextual Components and Constructive Choices," discusses the use of action research in Australian regional development context.

This section presents abstracts of conference papers about managerial spirituality and religion. Some of the abstracts include "What Should a Science of Workplace Spirituality Study?," focusing on developing a methodology for analyzing spirituality in the workplace, "Correlates of the Protestant Ethic of Hard Work: Results from a Diverse Ethno-Religious Sample," about how Protestent work ethic affects the corporate workplace, and "Why is Spirituality Integral to Management Education?," that discusses how religion and spirituality can affect management education.

This section presents abstracts of papers related to business policy and strategy, including "Competition, Learning, or Legitimacy: Understanding the Adoption of Websites by Consumer Magazines," about corporate earnings restatements; "A Road to Directorship: How Corporate Executives Secure Positions on Other Firm's Boards," about the role of outside directors; and "A Selection that Cannot Stand the Test: Succession Context and New CEO Dismissal," about executive succession.

This article presents abstracts of several studies related to critical management. Mark Learmonth focused on research interviews in management studies following philosopher Jacques Derrida. Stephen B. Sloane discussed the prospect of considering human happiness to be a concept relevant to management education. David Paul focused on democracy in the contemporary workplace. John Teta Luhman discussed rational-collective legitimate authority. Martin Wood focused on linking the current global economic model of free markets with free people demanding free and open societies. David Weitzner proposed that business academics need to begin to read Derrida as a philosopher. Emmanuel Metais and Richard Pin focused on how, through subversion, an organization can overturn established dominant models, by attacking their weaknesses and contradictions. Jill Woodilla and Jeanie M. Forray explored the link between justice and political consciousness in organizational life. Mahmoud Ezzamel and Hugh Willmott examined how practices of strategizing in organizations are discursively constructed and enacted. Sarah Brand Stookey explored the meanings and functions of money through analysis of several works.

This section focuses on several studies presented at a conference on international management. The article, "The Impact of Trade Liberalization Policies on National Patters of Corruption and Software Piracy," focuses on the impact of trade liberalization policies on national patterns of corruption and software piracy. "Repetition of Foreign Market Entry Forms: Managerial and Organizational Drivers," studies the repetition of forms of entry in a foreign market by taking into account not only organizational factors but also the managerial risk determinants of such repetitions. "Foreign Expansion Under Uncertainty: A Strategic Real Options Perspective," investigates the expansion of 30 of the largest global manufacturing companies in 6 industries in China over the last 20 years.

This section presents abstracts of several business policy and strategy conferences held in the U.S. as of August 2003. 'Complementary Resources and the Prediction of Post-Acquisition Performance,' by David R. King, Rebecca J. Slotegraaf, Idalene F. Kesner and Tom Lenz shows that acquisitions, on average, do not improve firm performance. 'Exploring Competing Motivations Behind the Acquisition of High-Technology Targets,' by David R. King represents a significant contribution by demonstrating conflicting findings in existing merger and acquisition research may result from alternate motivations behind merger and acquisition activity. 'Strategic Inertia Determinants: Analyzing the Size, Middle Manager, and Competitive Intensity Mix,' by Willie Edward Hopkins, Ajay Menon, Christian Homburg and Shirley Ann Hopkins, revisits firm size as a determinant of strategic inertia. 'Restructuring in Japanese Companies: Foreign Ownership, Strategic Investments, and Firm Performance' by Parthiban David, Toru Yoshikawa and Abdual A. Rasheed shows that foreign ownership leads to reduction in research and development and capital expenditures as well as improvement in performance, especially for firms with high free cash flow that are likely to have the most severe agency problems.

The article presents abstracts on business policy and strategy topics which include the complexities of top management team (TMT) composition, insights about dynamic capabilities observed from simulated evolving competition, and venture capital syndication in China.

Spirituality has long been an influential force in the lives of many people. Although first quietly ignored in western business settings, the influence of spirituality has recently been a topic of heightened interest to managers and scholars in a large number of countries including the United States. However, in Bahia, Brazil, the fundamentals of spirituality have always been clear and an integral part of the community. As a result, most workplaces in the Bahia region exhibit many indications of the underlying spiritual nature of those employed there. A major component of Brazilian spirituality is the Candomble - religious traditions originating in western Africa. This paper examines the influence of the Brazilian Candomble on workers in Bahia. Organizational and managerial reflections are offered for managers around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research on supply chain management has made many valuable contributions, there is a dearth of empirical evidence and theoretical reflection on the characteristics of supply chains operating mainly in emerging economies. Consequently, the literature still lacks a framework that incorporates the context and dynamics encountered in such settings. The aim of this paper is to help to fill this gap by exploring how sustainability can be managed within supply chains in Brazil and how the results of this challenge can potentially bring new insights for managing sustainability in other emerging economies. This research employs grounded theory approach and case study method in the upstream part of the Brazilian offshore oil and gas supply chain, which involves a successful case of a focal company that was able to incorporate sustainability into its supply chain. This research contributes to the literature by identifying and discussing those additional barriers encountered in Brazil due to unique idiosyncrasies and institutional environment. Also, this paper shows that pressing social issues increase supply chain uncertainty and that focal companies play an even more important role to endorse new technologies, increase integration, enhance collaboration and promote sustainable supply chains in countries like Brazil, where the identified barriers are particularly salient. Also, this research argues that natural resource-based supply chains may be more geographically bounded than other supply chains and that sustainable supply chains can only be successfully implemented through innovation, which becomes a critical driver for supply chain enhanced sustainability performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Think tanks became key political and economic actors during the 20th century, occupying a position between academic institutions, the state, and public debate. Think tanks are especially prominent in setting frames for what constitutes acceptable or deviant beliefs and actions in understanding economic activity. Their operation and influence has been acknowledged and analysed in political science and policy analysis, but their position in relation to organization and management studies and business schools has been under- researched. In this paper, we review existing literature on think tanks to frame an analysis of a short-lived Brazilian think tank, the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (IPES). We show how this initiative was successful in bringing then-deviant perspectives on management and organization into the area of legitimate controversy, where they could be debated and ultimately accepted. It is especially notable how management education and then-nascent business schools in Brazil served as vehicles to achieve this aim. Through this analysis, we build theory to clarify the understanding of business schools and management education as inherently political and ideological, and show how those politics and ideologies can be framed by actors in think tanks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries have begun acknowledge the importance of implanting aspects of the Ecological Modernization (EM) approach, namely green technologies, green regulation and green customer behavior, to create an environment that ensures the improvement of the environmental performance of organizations. Organizations have been adopting Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices in response to such need. Against that background, this research uses both EM elements and the Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) to analyze the effects of external GSCM practices, namely, "Cooperation with Customers" (CC) and "Green Purchasing" (GP) on the Environmental Performance (EP) of organizations. In order to achieve the objectives of this research, a multi-method model of research has been used, that is, survey and multiple-case studies with Brazilian companies. Main results include: (a) the relationship between external GSCM practices and EP is significant and positive; (b) the Brazilian case supports the case for EM through GSCM (c) Brazilian businesses depend more on customers than suppliers to improve EP; and (d) Different roles of suppliers and customers are identified through a GSCM approach. This paper bridges EM and RDT theories by showing that GSCM can improve EP and that such process depends more on CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The favela slums in the city of Rio de Janeiro have been object of an intensive security program in the recent years. The UPP (Unidades de Policia Pacificadora) program has been celebrated by mass media for promoting the 'pacification' of such territories by taking over the control of the territories from drug traffickers. However, the proximity of World Cup and Olympic Games, and the entwined relations of corporations, civil society and government show that this program has hidden motivations which seems much more significant than the ones formally presented. This paper uses the theoretical framework of Antonio Gramsci to explain how this process assumes the condition of a passive revolution, intended to change the old economic system of theses territories and integrate them to the capitalist market. The passive revolution is sustained by the analysis of the strategy of UPPs, territory control, culture transformation, and co-optation of leaderships. This process aims to recover the confidence of internal and external investor in the capacity of the local and national government to control the city, but entails also serious implications which are here analyzed and criticized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]