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This text is a vivit-uary—and not an obit-uary—of Bruno Latour: a tribute to his life, not a commemoration of his death. The question is: how do we inherit Latour? The author seeks to avoid the deadly modernization of his rich heritage, to avoid dividing a single network of his projects and statements along the boundaries of modern disciplines: sociology, philosophy, semiotics, anthropology. Instead, it is proposed to articulate and assemble Latour-the-anthropologist, linking together his projects of the anthropology of sciences and technologies, symmetrical anthropology, and the anthropology of the Moderns (an inquiry into the modes of existence). This approach allows us to find the Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinths of his heritage, to learn to follow the trajectory of the transformation of his messages through a variety of topics, disciplines, projects, genres, and formats.

The article analyzes a connection between empiricism and the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (D. Bloor, B. Barnes, J. Henry). I use Strong Program’s theories of perception and observation in science as cases to demonstrate this link. The main points of my argument are the following. First, characteristic problems of the empiricist tradition are at the focus of the Strong Program. Second, relations between the Strong Program and empiricist tradition are complex. While proponents of the Strong Program criticize classical empiricism of Bacon and logical empiricism, they employ new empiricism of Mary Hesse’s network model as a crucial theoretical resource for their social theory of knowledge. Third, The Strong Program uses Hesse’s theory as a model for the renewal of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. A key point of the analysis is that it is reasonable to add to the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions in the sociology of knowledge another empiricist one as exemplified in the Strong Program. I conclude the article by stressing interdisciplinary tendencies in this empiricist sociology of scientific knowledge.

The paper aims to explore the behavior of Russian school-age children who are faced with a new social and psychological phenomenon: threats associated with the digital environment. Our focus was on the ability (psychological as well as technical) of teenagers to stand against cyber threats. At the preliminary stage of the research we analysed both Russian and international studies on how to promote cyber security awareness among school children and, in particular, how to respond to the cyber threats associated with the new social context formed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We used survey research as the main method and designed a special questionnaire that was then offered to a group of 7—11-grade students (N=5,682) from seven Russian regions in the late 2020. The research data was processed using the SPSS and STATISTICA programmes. The data allowed us to assess the degree in which the children were familiar with the methods and means of protecting sensitive personal information, as well as their ability to stand against cyber threats basing on their knowledge and skills. The research also helped us to identify the role of schools in promoting the children’s readiness for the modern digital reality. The typical shortcomings in the digital competences of school-age children are noteworthy here too, first of all, the ones concerning the knowledge of cyber risk types related to the use of social media and internet communication services. We conclude that there is a need for systemic measures on various levels of education that would help reduce the cyber risks for adolescents on the social media and promote the quality of digital competence development in Russian schools.

The authors address the currently vital issue of the cyber-risks arising on the grounds of such challenges as ‘COVID-19 phenomenon’, general digitalization of the national and international communities, change in the social and educational trends, etc. The digitalization of education proves to perform as a risk factor for the management of education systems at different levels, and the problems of the e-safety and the digital skills advancement of the children subjected to the Internet need to be solved to fight cyberbulling, cyber-victimization, and cyber-slavery that bases on the hypertrophic gaming and excessively digitalized social net-working. Within the research methodology, the key research methods were the context analysis, the content analysis of the quality Russian and international academic publications and regulatory acts. The social poll covered school students of the 7–11 grades (N = 5682), and the results were processed with SPSS and STATISTICA packages. The most crucial research findings associate with the confirmation of the fact that the absolute majority of the Russian school students are digital natives; Internet and social networks proved to be the key source of information for the schoolers (even those who recognize that some of this information is authentically and potentially faulty); the social motive is also key for the digital devotion; over 30% of the respondents faced with cyberbulling and personal interventions from strangers. The research results are presented with the background idea to facilitate the development of the managerial mechanisms in education that would ease the critical situations rooting in the digitalization risks.

This chapter explores in-depth studies of teacher personality and its effect on pedagogical design in the framework of course design and course delivery. The research is based on quantitative and qualitative methods, including surveys, interviews, comparative analysis, and computational method. Three categories of stakeholders were embraced, students, teachers, and program administrators, with a total of 382 respondents. The research was mapped out in four phases: two synchronous and two asynchronous. The research questions were: (1) What teacher qualities account for successful pedagogical design? and (2) What correlation exists between each of the revealed teacher qualities and pedagogical design? The findings included a set of eleven key teacher qualities nominated by stakeholders: responsibility, sociability, industriousness, goal-orientation, creativity, punctuality, attentiveness, pro-activeness, fairness, empathy, and exactingness. The authors demonstrate and illustrate that these qualities are reflected in both course design and course delivery, and could thus be a subject of formation during both a teacher’s pre-service and in-service periods. Further research perspectives are highlighted, such as approaches to the evaluation of teacher performance, including 360-degree feedback; designing a course that is closely connected to a teacher’s qualities; and shaping a teacher’s personality as a factor of pedagogical design.

In this chapter, the authors consider a category of economic agents whose role and influence in the economy and society may increase, they have remained mostly ignored by the mainstream international business literature, even though their impact can be powerful. They are organizations that originate in the cooperative sector or prioritize social solidarity and community-focused commitments, e.g., workers’ cooperatives, mutual benefit societies and social enterprises. The power of the participative economy and cooperative networking is illustrated by the example of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the Basque Country in Spain. By forging relations with locally rooted and community-oriented organizations such as cooperatives, they can improve their image and better integrate into the economy, in particular at the local level, expand and diversify the cohort of business partners and, accordingly, the spectrum of business opportunities. The changes create a challenge to multinational corporations that are seen by many as the main protagonists and beneficiaries of globalization.

This article attempts to reconstruct the method of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory by articulating its links with the semiotics of Algirdas Julien Greimas. Semiotic methodology is considered as a point of entry to the labyrinth of Latour’s projects and a thread of Ariadne through it. The article is divided into two parts. The first one examines Greimas’ conceptions of narrative grammar and narrative programmes. This analysis leads to a number of conclusions: a) Greimas’ semiotics is as ambitious a scientific project as Latourian sociology. Greimas elaborates the general premises of structural linguistics and proposes to extend the latter not only to scientific discourses outside cultural (myth, folktale) and literary texts, but also beyond the textual world itself; b) Elements of semiotic methodology crucial for Latour are emphasized, including the operation of bracketing out (of referent and enunciator) and a separation of orders of (semiotic) acts that points to the distinction between linguistic operations inside the text and the meta-linguistic operations of semiotician; c) The vocabulary of movement (trajectory, a point of departure, circulation, vehicles etc.) that are omnipresent in Latour’s writing is narratological in origin and has methodological importance for his work. The second part of the article shows how Latour appropriates and transforms elements of semiotics in his early work on the sociology of science. Methodologically, Latour’s anthropological approach to science is marked by two successive moves: 1. suspension of the key binaries in sociology and the philosophy of science (e.g. subject/object, truth/falsity, social/intellectual); 2. reassembling such distinctions. In his works, Latour carries out these methodological practices by means of sequences of operations designated here as “bracketing in,” “bracketing out,” and “unbracketing.”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report an explicit taxonomy of maritime operations (MO) to guide harbour masters (HMs) of smaller ports in planning more sustainable operations. Design/methodology/approach This research presents strategies for building theory to promote more sustainable port management in a two-stage research design. Starting from a base taxonomy in research Stage 1, ethnographic content analysis (ECA) of a sparse prior literature on MO generated a tentative taxonomy. In Stage 2, interviews to capture tacit practitioner knowledge refined the tentative taxonomy into a credible practitioner-informed final taxonomy. Findings ECA offers researchers a powerful tool to analyse complex operational problems. In this paper MOs are represented in an explicit taxonomy. Practical implications A final taxonomy of MOs guides sustainability strategy formulation by HMs and assists them to protect vital commercial revenues which serve supply chains and local communities. Originality/value An explicit final taxonomy of MO is derived using a novel methodology. The taxonomy guides sustainability strategy formulation and underpins subsequent planning of sustainable development policies.

Our study engages evidence from a University and College Union branch archive to explore developments in employee relations (ER) that reflect the organisational effects of marketisation of UK universities. The evidence exposes points of strain in ER at a level of professional divide between managers and academics, and helps to understand their roots in the context of universities as organisational hybrids. Our investigation reveals the failure of ER to adapt to increasingly conflict-ridden working environments and encourages a different, sustainability-centred, approach to constructing ER in universities in an attempt to coordinate more effectively the clashing institutional logics.

This paper explores conceptually the process of relevance discovery prompted by a major alteration in the institutional settings that has caused a radical change in the existing management knowledge paradigm, as new, mostly “imported”, knowledge replaces the “old” knowledge base. This situation puts significant pressure on a particular group of experts designated in the literature as “knowledge gatekeepers”. Their role is particularly important when external information requires contextual interpretation in order to be considered useful by other members of the social group. The paper focuses on recontextualisation as a critical element of relevance discovery and the transformation of “imported” knowledge from irrelevant to relevant and analyses the factors that influence the ability of knowledge gatekeepers to cope with the task of contextualisation. An account of two field studies of post-communist marketisation is used to illustrate the challenges of contextualisation.

Mobile technologies promote computer-assisted language learning (CALL) while mobile applications, being learner-oriented by design, provide a powerful founding to build individual self-paced environments for language study. Mobile CALL (MALL) tools are able to offer new educational contexts and fix, at least, partially, the problems of previous generations of CALL software. Nonetheless, mobile technologies alone are not able to respond to CALL challenges without cooperation and interaction with language theory and pedagogy. To facilitate and formalize this interaction several criteria sets for CALL software has been worked out in recent years. That is why an approach based on using mobile devices is a natural way to transfer the learning process from teaching-centered classroom to a process, which is oriented to individual learners and groups of learners with better emphasis on supporting individual learning styles, user collaboration and different teaching strategies. Pronunciation teaching technology in one of areas, where the automated speech processing algorithms and corresponding software meet the problems of practical phonology. Computer-assisted prosody teaching (CAPT), a sub-domain of CALL, is a relatively new topic of interest for computer scientists and software developers. Present-day advancement of mobile CAPT tools is supported by evolutionary processes in the theory of language learning and teaching. This paper explores language–technology relations using a case of StudyIntonation – a cross-platform multi-functional mobile CAPT tool based on a digital processing core for speech processing, visualization and estimation developed by the authors. We particularly address the problems of developing CAPT evaluation frameworks. To define the problematic points of the project and understand the directions for future work, we discuss an approach to formalized evaluation using a set of CAPT-specific criteria drawing attention to such evaluation factors as general descriptive information, instructional purposes, functionality, usability, and presentation.

Larger ports routinely deploy environmental management tools but systematic sustainability management in smaller ports is rare. Accordingly, this paper assesses the sustainability needs of smaller ports in Cornwall and Devon, a case-study, and proposes a systematic method for identifying and managing them. The development and deployment of a Port Sustainability Management System for smaller ports in an environmentally sensitive but economically peripheral UK area is discussed. In-depth collaboration with Harbour Masters to identify sustainability management practice revealed few applications of the theoretical elements of triple bottom line accounting. Rather, semi-structured interviews unearthed the essential elements of port management and facilitated mapping of the forces which underpin port sustainability practices. A constructivist grounded theory approach identified emerging concepts, common patterns and sustainability themes, which were synthesised into a Sustainability Management System based on 11 indicators of knowledge criteria and a self-scoring mechanism. Adopters reported a more proactive stance towards sustainability and safeguarding of local communities, improved understanding, and more effective discourse with stakeholders. Benefits spanned port improvements; awareness of progress, performance, strengths and weaknesses; enhanced communication and reporting; and improved thought processes. Almost all reacted positively and identified multiple benefits, equating to two new jobs in each port.

Using ethnographic evidence from the former Soviet republics, this paper examines a relatively new and mainly unobserved concept in international business literature: the phenomenon of communication disengagement that manifests itself in many emerging markets. We link it to the deficiencies of the local professional business discourse rooted in language limitations, which reflects a lack of experience with the market economy. This hampers cognitive coherence between foreign and local business entities, adding to the liability of foreignness as certain instances of professional experience fail to find adequate linguistic expression, and complicates cross-cultural adjustments, causing multinational companies (MNCs) financial losses. We contribute to the IB literature by examining cross-border semantic sensemaking through a retrospectively constructed observational study. We argue that a relative inadequacy of the national professional idiom is likely to remain a feature of the business environment in post-communist economies for some time, and therefore should be factored into business strategies of MNCs. Consequently, we recommend including discursive hazards in the risk evaluation of international projects.

In this exploratory study, the authors introduced an interculturally enriched collaboration script (IECS) for working in culturally diverse groups within a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment and then assessed student online collaborative behaviour, learning performance and experiences. The question was if and how these variables differed for the groups that used an IECS versus groups that used a general collaboration script (CS) that did not include intercultural elements. Using a web conferencing tool, 47 students from a university in Ukraine and a university in the Netherlands worked together in groups to develop project plans on an environmental problem. The groups in the IECS condition showed a higher frequency of so-called contributing behaviour but a lower frequency of planning behaviour, seeking input and social interaction than the groups in the CS condition. The IECS groups also produced better project plans than the CS groups. Future study using a similar experimental set-up but with larger samples is recommended to see if the present results can be replicated.

The purpose of this article is to assess the financial depth of the Russian economy in the context of its main rivalries within the BRIC group. The Russian financial market is evaluated by a set of key indicators that characterize the level of maturity of the national financial system in respect to international standards. This task is implemented through descriptive analysis of extensive international data generated from a time series covering the period 1995-2010. The article demonstrates that, in comparison to other emerging markets, and its closest competitors Brazil, India and China, the financial depth of the Russian economy may be characterized as inadequate. In the Russian financial market potential for growth is combined with exceptionally high risks. Insufficient depth of the financial system undermines its long-term competitiveness and exacerbates its exposure to shocks in the international market. © The University of Hertfordshire Business School and W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2013.

article i nfo To foster collaboration and improve the quality of students' discussions in mixed- and same- culture learner groups engaged in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL), a collaboration script was introduced. A 2 × 2-factorial design was used to examine the effects of using this collaboration script on students' online collaborative behavior and the quality of their discussions. A total of 130 university students worked in dyads on a topic concerned with intercultural communication. Culturally mixed dyads working with the script showed a higher frequency of seeking input and social interaction than the students in the other three types of dyads. Same-culture dyads working with the script showed a lower frequency of planning activity than same-culture dyads working without the script. Independent of script condition, the same- culture dyads displayed a higher frequency of contributing activity and showed a higher quality of online discussion than the mixed-culture dyads. Collaboration in culturally mixed groups is less than optimal and may require extra facilitation.

Unlike most other transition economies in Europe, in Russia correlation between employment dynamics and GDP dynamics has been weak, contributing to a relatively low rate of unemployment. This article seeks to explain this phenomenon by investigating a combination of inefficient enforcement of labour regulations and the emergence of a vast informal sector of the labour market, leading to the unusually broad implementation of flexible working time and flexible pay, as a critical factor in the stabilisation of employment in the country.

Large and medium-size companies have failed to acquire legitimacy and respectability among the vast strata of Russian society. The resulting crisis of confidence may have serious consequences, including increasing intervention by the state. Our study, which is based on a survey of 129 firms in Russia, seeks, first, to establish whether Russian managers' attitudes toward and understanding of corporate social responsibility were similar to those of their Western counterparts and, second, to find out whether the conditions of low generalized public trust in Russian corporations would stimulate Russian firms to develop corporate social responsibility as a means of increasing their legitimacy with their stakeholders, as suggested in the literature. Our survey provides evidence of a discrepancy between attitudes predicted by theory and those revealed by managers. This leads us to consider a range of economic, social, and political factors in the search for an explanation for the discrepancy.

From a modest start almost 20 years ago, the Russian financial market has emerged as a major force in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This article offers a retrospective account of the two decades of development of the financial sector in Russia, with an emphasis on the securities market; outlines the main stages in its development; and proposes an assessment of the capital market in comparison to other international markets. We conclude with an overview of the market's performance during the current financial crisis. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Understanding what constitutes the perceived value of foreign education to international business students is critical for business schools in order to achieve their recruitment targets. One established method relies on a financial interpretation of the costs and benefits of business education. By contrast, this study advocates a holistic approach by employing the concept of “internal” and “external” career success as its theoretical underpinning. A survey of undergraduate Chinese students in two British business schools based on such approach provides confirmation of the importance of an individual's judgement of own success as the foundation of value-related expectations and suggests that academic practice should be concerned with a wider range of competencies and responses to individual attitudes, shifting emphasis towards a greater spectrum of social values.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate labour market practices in a transition economy in relation to broader institutional configurations.Design/methodology/approachThrough a review of relevant literature and the analysis of statistical data the paper reveals some specific factors influencing labour market practices in a transition economy.FindingsThe paper establishes a link between inefficient enforcement and the emergence of compensating institutional arrangements on the one side and the unusually broad implementation of flexible working time and flexible pay on the other as a crucial factor that made the stabilization of employment in Russia possible.Originality/valueThe paper reveals how a formal regulatory system, which on the face of it is similar to what is a norm in the majority of European countries, may coexist with a distinctive labour market model and explores issues of relevance to academics, researching in the field, policy‐makers, human resource managers, employers and employees.

Employing primary data collected in the summer of 1991 in a representative survey of two farming areas in the territory of the republics of Russia and Ukraine, this study addresses the issue of the future involvement of collective and state-farm workers in private farming. Through the use of a LISREL model, it is argued that those who have been involved in small-scale private farming show no interest in expanding their farm operations or in buying or leasing additional land for farming. Moreover, it is maintained that those who intend to become farmers in privately owned and operated farms are more likely to be young, educated, and to some extent, ideologically committed to the free market system. A combination of structural constraints and a lack of knowledge regarding what to expect in the future can be viewed as possible explanations of the answers provided by respondents.

This study investigates the attitudes of Russian executives towards corporate social responsibility. The empirical study is based on an original survey of executive managers of 129 medium and large industrial enterprises in all regions of Russia. The questionnaire was designed using some important conclusions made by theorists who have analysed the development of CSR in mature capitalist economies. The objective was to probe whether the reaction by Russian managers would be in line with expectations grounded in western theoretical constructs, in particular the concept of business legitimacy. The study provides evidence of a discrepancy between anticipated outcomes based on the studies, reflecting western practice, and actual attitudes shown by Russian managers. A range of economic, social and political factors are considered in the discussion section in the search for an explanation of these results.

The status and understanding of marketing in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia are tracked over a 40-year period, making extensive use of Russian-language sources. In the late Soviet period marketing is seen as a Western business system that was not applicable to an economy based on extreme centralisation and state-inspired conditions of shortage. With the collapse of communism, marketing is variously seen as still not quite suitable for Russian conditions, as a sales support activity or as a branch of public relations. At the same time great confusion arises over the nature of marketing owing to the problems of converting Western marketing terms into Russian, for which there are often no equivalents. Translations of Western marketing textbooks reveal translators' unabated struggles with marketing terminology and the unsatisfactory results. Literal translations, where possible, or direct transliteration into Russian merely add to the confusion. It is argued that this state of affairs is symptomatic of a wid...

This paper evaluates the impact of ownership concentration on firm performance in a weak institutional environment. Specifically, using new survey evidence, we seek to appraise quantitatively the performance of block-holder-controlled firms in Russia and to identify, within the domain of corporate governance theory, factors that may explain such performance. We find evidence of negative association between the size of the dominant owners’ shareholding and performance parameters such as investment, capacity utilization, and profitability. At the same time, we establish that control structures with multiple, large shareholders increase efficiency. The ambiguity of the effects of ownership concentration suggests that country-specific factors play an important role.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of global corporate and industrial change at the firm level. Our focus is on convergence vs. divergence of national institutional systems. Data are drawn from a survey of German and UK firms. Our results for adaptation behavior of British subsidiaries in Germany suggest that at the firm level the primacy of national institutions and institutional complementarity as determinants of the organizational behavior of MNEs may be overstated. Nonetheless, evidence that German MNEs in Britain seek to choose strategic choices for which there is institutional support in the host country suggests that complementarity is functional enough to incite adjustment even in the absence of strong formal pressure. The evidence that both German and British firms seem to prefer practices characteristic of liberal market economies may pose a problem for institutional stability in Germany and generates implications for the likely pathways of institutional change.

This paper analyses links between intra-organizational adaptation and institutional variation across countries. Using the varieties of capitalism viewpoint, we examine strategic options open to multinational firms operating simultaneously in liberal market economies and coordinated market economies. A holistic perspective is achieved by implementing an original ‘index of institutional impact.’ Data are drawn from a survey of the subsidiaries of German firms in the UK in 2007. The results suggest that pressure towards accepting local practices for multinational firms varies across the dimensions in which firms resolve coordination problems, inciting speedy convergence in some, but allowing for maintaining distinctive practices in other.

PurposeTo identify factors that impede the absorption of management knowledge imported into transition countries, using Belarus as a case, in order to increase efficiency of knowledge transfer.Design/methodology/approachThe findings are based on three sources: the extensive analysis of the academic literature; the results of a detailed survey and interviews; and personal observations and impressions gained by the authors during almost ten years of participation in technical assistance programmes for Belarus universities financed by the British Council.FindingsThe study reveals a combination of factors rooted in linguistics, culture, training and ambience that prevent knowledge transfer from fully achieving its objectives as a modernization tool insofar as knowledge gets distorted or missing during the transfer process.Practical implicationsThe proposed solution is to intensify the knowledge transfer even further through increasing its interactive component by providing channels for direct interaction between educators in the newly independent states and the West.Originality/valueThis paper introduces new original data, provides an analysis of an important practical issue and offers a feasible solution to this issue.