Are outside directors on the small and medium-sized enterprise board always beneficial? Disclosure of firm-specific information in board-management relations as the missing mechanism

In board governance literature and practice, the presence of outside directors is presumed to have a beneficial effect on board effectiveness and firm performance. This study challenges this prevailing view by exploring the boundary conditions and intermediate mechanism preventing the potential benefits of outside directors. Our results reveal that reality is more complex than previously assumed. Using unique data from a sample of 561 Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that the presence of outside directors has a neutral or even negative effect under certain boundary conditions on board service engagement in the small and medium-sized enterprises context. Family ownership control and infrequent board meetings are two important contingencies that reduce management’s propensity to disclose firm-specific information to the board in the presence of outside directors. The disclosure of such information, in turn, serves as a critical mechanism to offset firm-specific information asymmetry, associated with better board service engagement and (indirectly) enhanced firm performance. Based on our study, we articulate new theoretical insights for understanding board governance in small and medium-sized enterprises, which integrate existing board governance theories with the dominant coalition context, serving as a springboard for future board governance research.

Neonatal Size and Birth Canal Dimensions

The limitation of the fetal growth process during pregnancy is supposed to be an adaptative response to a physical or a physiological constraint: the pelvic size or the maternal resources and metabolism. In this study 131 mother-infant dyads were recruited. We investigate correlation between maternal traits (height, BMI) pelvic variables (conjugate diameter, inter-spinous diameter, sub-pubic angle) and neonatal traits (gestational age, birthweight, head, suboccipito-brematic and abdominal girth). We found that the three neonatal variables are significantly inter-correlated. Among maternal traits, height is highly correlated with conjugate and inter-spinous diameters. Subpubic angle is correlated with inter-spinous diameter. Among neonatal and pelvimetry correlations, conjugate diameter is highly correlated with suboccipito-bregmatic girth. The pelvic size seems to be the primary constraint to the fetal growth process. This adjustement of fetus size to the birth canal dimensions limits the risk of dystocia. But the way this adjustement occurs at the end of pregnancy is unclear. We assume that the uterus expansion limitation may be an intermediate mechanism explaining the high correlation between pelvic and neonatal traits.

Islam, Social Justice, and Democracy

Egalitarian preferences and benevolence are significant elements of Islamic social justice, which is one of the main pillars of Islam's ethico-political system. Surprisingly, empirical investigations about attitudinal implications of Islamic social justice values are rare. This is one of the first studies examining the correlations between Islam, social justice values, and regime preferences. It proposes that benevolence and egalitarian distributive preferences will induce democratic support and mediate the effect of religiosity on democratic orientations. Seemingly unrelated regression estimations using a Muslim-only sample from the sixth wave of the World Values Surveys support these hypotheses. The effects of social justice values are exclusive to support for democracy and not to support for authoritarian systems. Furthermore, religiosity increases support for democracy through intermediate mechanism of social justice values. These results imply that, next to principles of ijtihad, ijma, and shura, Islamic social justice values can induce pluralistic ideas in Muslim majority societies.

Issue Importance, Third-Person Effects of Protest News, and Participation in Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement

How do news coverage of a grassroot protest movement and perceived importance of the movement affect people’s participation in the movement? And does people’s inference of the effect of the news on themselves versus others make a difference in participation? Informed by the third-person effect hypothesis, we examine these questions in the context of the student-led Sunflower Movement in Taiwan that rose in opposition to a trade pact with China. In the study, we advanced three propositions: First, that the perceived effects of the protest news on oneself would be a better predictor of political participation than would perceived effects of such news on others. Second, that the perceived effect on oneself, not on others, would enhance the impact of issue importance on participation in the movement. And third, how people processed protest news would be another intermediate mechanism on subsequent participatory activities. We found support for these propositions in data collected from a probability sample of 1,137 respondents. The implications of the findings for the robust third-person effect research are discussed.

Does Customer Value Creation Behavior Drive Customer Well-being?

To address the potential ambivalent effects of customer value creation behavior (CVCB) in a service setting, we developed a theoretical model identifying separate psychological mechanisms that account for both positive and negative effects of CVCB on customer outcomes, such as customer value and customer well-being. Participants comprised 103 business customer–supplier dyads. The results show that CVCB enhanced customer outcomes through the intermediate mechanism of customer self-determination, but hindered customer outcomes by generating customer role stress. In addition, the results indicate that relationship quality moderates the effect of CVCB on customer self-determination and role stress, thus channeling its effect in either a positive or a negative direction. The results offer insight into the mixed findings on customer behavior in the service literature.

Dissolution of Pyrite Particles by Chemical Oxidation and Bioleaching

Dissolution of pyrite by chemical oxidation and bioleaching were studied with using short-term batch experiments. The results show that the rate of oxidative dissolution of pyrite increases with the increasing concentration of ferric in ferric sulfate solutions. With the corresponding in the bioleaching, the leaching rate of pyrite is markedly affected by the Eh of the solution. The ferric/ferrous ratio controls the relative rate of the oxidation reactions involved in the process. Additionally, the leaching rate of pyrite is controlled by the pH. The phase analysis of products indicated that S2- 2oxidation can produce S0 and SO2- 4under these conditions. On the basis of predecessors and using these species，the simplest expected oxidation mechanism is S2O2- 3regarded as the intermediate mechanism during the oxidation process.