An empirical analysis of driving factors of Xi’an hub economic development

In order to promote Xi’an’s economic development as an export-oriented hub, 7 indicators, including GDP, foreign trade volume, investment volume, passenger transport volume, freight volume, post and telecommunications business income, and the number of industrial enterprises above designated size, are selected to analyze the development of the hub economy through multiple linear regression analysis method. The results show that foreign trade, passenger traffic and post and telecommunications business revenues are significant to the economic development of Xi’an hub. However, the freight volume, investment and the number of enterprises above designated size have not passed the inspection. According to self-organization theory, the countermeasures for Xi’an to develop the hub economy are puts forward.

Crisis transformations of socio-economic systems

Crisis phenomena threats are growing on national and global scale against the background of tightened geopolitical and geo-economic competition. Such trends as destruction and degradation, are becoming integral parts of change in the vital function of economic agents, institutional structures at different levels. Therefore, the search for an alternative paradigm for the study and assessment of the transformations of socio-economic systems (SES) is one of the topical directions in the development of economic science. In the objective conditions of constant renewal of world economic relations, proceeding from the multilevel nature of social changes, the article substantiates the need for innovative ways to search, develop and implement strategic guidelines that exclude the raw type of economic development. From the standpoint of the self-organization theory, it specifies that an open system is, as a rule, in a state of unstable equilibrium. The article proves that the purpose of theoretical research and practical actions should be the implementation of controlled effective evolutionary and revolutionary qualitative changes. At the turn of the third millennium, under the increasing impact of periodic civilizational shocks at the stages of economic and political cycles, the determinants of SES stability change over a long period. The transformation of natural factors requires scientific understanding - from motive levers into constraints on the potential for economic growth. The growing volumes of services and the virtual economy are hardly comparable with the products of the industrial sector, while the excessive polarization of incomes hinders economic dynamics. Arguments are given that the processes of changing existing SES can be accompanied by their deformation. The forces of the fall are opposed by compensatory mechanisms of reimbursement for the loss of material, human, information resources. The author focuses on the need to organize and manage the new approaches to the management of SES changes, having in mind time and space scale of the development of integral, interconnected bodies of social and economic agencies at state, corporative as well as individual levels. Crisis shocks of SES transformation are mainly linked with reasons stemming from financialization processes, weakening of sovereignty due to the expansion of global value chains, as well as from major emergencies and disasters, unexpected climate changes, etc. The article suggests improving the conceptual apparatus of transformational changes. The leading trend in modern science is interdisciplinarity. Integration of various scientific disciplines should affect both economics and institutional, social, spiritual, ethnic, moral spheres of life.

Bringing Political Upheaval and Cultural Trauma into Order: A Document-Theoretical Approach to the Social Significance of Bibliographic Classification Systems

This paper explores the ability to define bibliographic classification systems as socially significant documents in a way that goes beyond their immediate function in the information retrieval process. It does so in dialog with theory on documents and documentality, and knowledge organization theory. Two examples show how development of new classification systems address social and cultural structures in periods of rapid social and cultural change and crisis. The first example discusses the design of a classification system for Swedish public libraries in the late 1910s, and the second addresses the re-formulation of the Holocaust experience in American Jewish library classification practice in the 1950s and 1960s. Results indicate that social significance to classification systems influence the definition their institutional context in relation to wider social issues and movements. The character of this influence suggests research on documentality needs to address the relation between form and content in documents defined as reifications of social acts.

The Causes and Consequences of the Neo-Brandeisian Antitrust Movement in the United States

The recent appointments of Timothy Wu as Special Assistant to the U.S. President for Technology and Competition Policy and Lina Khan, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, two prominent advocates for a fundamental shift in U.S. antitrust policy, and the introduction of federal and state legislation to change how antitrust is applied signal a realistic possibility of a fundamental change of direction in the course of U.S. antitrust. The shift advocated by these self-described “Brandeisians” goes beyond the reform proposals advocated by the Post-Chicago School movement. Whereas the Post-Chicago School movement, which was based primarily on industrial organization theory, advocated for change while recognizing the primacy of economic theory in the application of antitrust law, the Neo-Brandeisians argue that economic considerations should only be part of the substantive antitrust analysis and not necessarily the determinative factor. For many Europeans, and in particular Germans familiar with legal history, the ideas advanced by the Neo-Brandeisians will be familiar. Louis Brandeis, whose writings and opinions serve as the intellectual compass of the Neo-Brandeisians, was himself influenced by the Freirechtsbewegung and their skepticism of a wertfreie jurisprudence. Borrowing from post-modernist philosophy, the Neo-Brandeisians recognize that the dominant legal doctrines reflect the prevailing power structures in society. In their view, the fact that U.S. antitrust law relies heavily on economic theory does not allow it to claim value neutrality. The more radical members of this movement consequently argue that other values beyond economics should be considered in the application of U.S. antitrust law by the courts and antitrust agencies. In this article we attempt to introduce this movement to a European audience and assess its possible impact on the direction of U.S. antitrust.

Settler Simultaneity and Anti-Indigenous Racism at Land-Grant Universities

Moments of performative racial consciousness, however urgent and necessary, often fail to reckon with long-standing demands against injustice from communities of color. In the case of Indigenous Peoples in higher education, these demands frequently include an end to derogatory mascots and racialized campus violence. This article attends to those issues by merging and extending settler-colonial theory and racialized organization theory to examine how the logics of Indigenous elimination and dispossession permeate higher education. With a specific focus on land-grant universities, I argue that racialized organizations are embedded in institutional fields and that both operate within a broader settler-colonial project. I introduce the concept of settler simultaneity to further historicize the study of racialized organizations and uncover how they target persons, collectives, and ideas that pose obstacles to settler goals of subordination, extraction, and profiteering both locally and globally. I look to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a case study that illustrates how these logics work across time and conclude by considering how critical engagement with the logics of elimination can help us to better understand, and hold accountable, the policies and programs of racialized organizations in other areas of social life.

The Complex Relations between Organization and Disorganization and Their Conceptual System

For improving and developing self-organization theory in contemporary complex information systems theory, it is necessary to reinterpret related concepts and their relations and construct a conceptual system related to self-organization theory. Based on the latest research results, this article specifically discusses concepts of organization and disorganization, static organization and dynamic organization, static disorganization and dynamic disorganization, organizing and disorganizing, self-organization and other-organization, self-disorganization and other-disorganization, and their relations. Further, it explores the mechanism of organization and disorganization, the compatibility of organization and disorganization, feedback and mutual other-disorganization in interaction, constraint and freedom of organization and disorganization, complexity of restraint and external factors, and relations between “the good” and “the evil” in restraint and freedom. On this basis, a diagram of the conceptual system of organization and disorganization, including four levels and their relations, is presented.

Toward an Organizational Theory of Resilience: An Interim Struggle

While organizational resilience is widely considered as critical to sustainability, gaps in both the scholarly and professional literature exist. First, stronger conceptualization of the term is needed. Second, little is known about how organizational resilience can be continuously accomplished via daily practices and processes. Finally, the ongoing organization theory development does not sufficiently address these gaps. Contributing to the literature by filling in these fundamental gaps, the present study integrates the disconnectedly growing literature into an organizational theory of resilience. Based on the General Systems Theory, the resulting theory comprises inputs of human resources, socio-cultural values, institutional settings, and social and environmental issues, enabling organizational structure, value and belief subsystem, resilience mindset, sustainability practices, adaptive and buffering capacities, and sustainability performance as the output. Their dynamic relationships are discussed and expressed via a model and propositions, followed by implications for researchers and practitioners.

Goals as Emergent Autopoietic Processes

While the phenomena of reaching a goal is generally represented in the framework of optimization, the phenomena of becoming of a goal is more similar to a “self-organization and emergent” rather than an “optimization and preexisting” process. In this article we provide a modeling framework for the former alternative by representing goals as emergent autopoietic structures. In order to conceptually situate our approach, we first review some of the most remarkable attempts to formally define emergence, and identify that in most cases such definitions rely on a preexisting system to be observed prior and post emergence, being thus inadequate for a formalization of emergent goals corresponding to the becoming of a systems as such (e.g. emergence of life). Next, we review how an implementation of the reaction networks framework, known as Chemical Organization Theory (COT), can be applied to formalize autopoietic structures, providing a basis to operationalize goals as an emergent process. We next revisit the definitions of emergence under the light of our approach, and demonstrate that recent taxonomies developed to classify different forms of emergence can be naturally deduced from recent work aimed to explain the kinds of changes of the organizational structure of a reaction network.

Monopoly Characteristics and Policy Analysis of China's Online Retail Market

The network retail industry has been in a highly centralized pattern. According to the relevant concepts in the traditional industrial organization theory, this highly concentrated market needs regulation. Behind the rapid development of industry is the hidden worry that is constantly exposed. In 2011, Taobao announced a substantial increase in annual fees and software service fees, which caused conflicts with small and medium sellers. In the price war in Jingdong, it may have been sold at a price lower than the cost. The traditional industrial organization theory usually thinks that the monopoly market structure is not good. Because of its pricing model based on its own marginal cost and marginal income, it will cause welfare losses to consumers, resulting in low market efficiency and unnecessary losses. This paper first expounds the basic connotation and judgment criteria of monopoly, analyzes the monopoly and characteristics of online retail industry in the "Internet +" era, and finally puts forward some governance strategies for the monopoly problems existing in the current online retail industry.