Capital Conversion Research Articles

The Collaborative Economy Through an Everyday Entrepreneurship Lens: A Review & Research Agenda

The collaborative economy, which incorporates economic trends such as the access economy, sharing economy and gig economy, is the most significant entrepreneurial development of the previous decade. Despite this, entrepreneurship researchers have been slow to conceptualise or theorise emerging practices. We therefore advance an everyday entrepreneurship perspective to structure analysis of extant collaborative economy literature. From our systematic review of 109 peer-review articles, we develop a detailed picture of the economic changes afoot. We identify three avenues that delineate an entrepreneurship perspective to broader collaborative economy research, including analysis of non-economic capital conversion, microentrepreneurship and a critical ‘everyday’ entrepreneurship perspective.

WORKING CAPITAL MANAGEMENT – EFFICIENT TOOL FOR SUCCESS OF MILK PRODUCERS: TRUE OR FALSE?

Working capital management can be considered as vital issue in financial decision-making processes in company. Consequently, it directly affects company’s success in the way of its profitability. Empirical evidence is provided on a sample of Croatian and Slovenian companies in the dairy processing industry. Univariate and multivariate analyses are used to test hypotheses about impact of working capital management components and cash conversion cycle on company’s profitability. Furthermore, differences in working capital management policies in condition of crisis and before crisis are examined. Our findings show that none of working capital management components significant affect profitability, measured by return on assets, while statistically significant relation exists between cash conversion cycle as working capital management comprehensive measure and profitability

Compromise and complicity in international student mobility: the ethnographic case of Indian medical students at a Chinese university

ABSTRACTExisting scholarship on international student mobility (ISM) often draws on Bourdieu to interpret such mobility as a strategy of capital conversion used by privileged classes to reproduce their social advantage. This perspective stems from and also reinforces a rationalistic interpretation of student mobility. A shift of focus to interAsian educational mobilities involving non-elite individuals and institutions can reveal logics of behavior and of social interaction that are at discrepancy with the dominant perspective, thereby advancing the theorization of educational mobilities. This paper examines a case of Indian youths of less affluent backgrounds pursuing English-medium medical degrees (MBBS) at a provincial university in China. Through ethnography, the paper illustrates how various parties – individual, organizational and institutional – to this somewhat ‘unlikely’ project of knowledge mobility follow the discrepant logics of compromise and complicity to seek to realize their educational desires, social aspirations, and organizational objectives amidst realities of class disadvantage and resource inadequacy.

On the Role of Provision Points in Online Crowdfunding

Extending recent work on market mechanisms in new fintech offerings, we explore the implications of a key mechanism in online crowdfunding – the use of a provision point. Under a provision point mechanism (otherwise known as all-or-nothing or fixed fundraising scheme), the fundraiser, typically an entrepreneur, only receives funds pledged toward his or her campaign if a pre-registered fundraising target is met, rather than keeping everything that is raised. On the one hand, provision points may weaken contributors’ reliance on prior capital accumulation for judging a project’s potential for success, by eliminating their concerns about a partial fundraising outcome and by signaling the project or entrepreneur’s quality. On the other hand, provision points may induce a stronger reliance on prior capital accumulation by imposing a positive externality among contributors; the materialization of a contributor’s contribution depends explicitly on having enough contribution from others. We assess this tension empirically, examining a proprietary data set from a leading global reward-based crowdfunding platform that allows entrepreneurs to choose whether to apply a provision point. We separately consider the effects of prior capital accumulation on campaign visitors’ conversion and contribution behaviors, and how the effects shift in the presence of a provision point at different stages of the campaign lifecycle. Provision points are found to significantly weaken the association between prior capital accumulation and visitor conversion, implying a reduction in the potential for herd behavior or informational cascades.

Erratum to: Will Technological Change Save the World? The Rebound Effect in International Transfers of Technology

Technological change and its transfer to developing countries is often portrayed by policy-makers as a critical part of the solution to a resource problem such as climate change, based on the assumption that the transfer of resource-conserving technologies to developing countries will result in reduced use of natural capital by those countries. We demonstrate here, in a capital conversion based model of development, that the free transfer of resource-conserving technologies to developing countries will increase the options available to those countries, but that the way that they expend these options need not be in the direction of conserving resources. This is another example of the potential for a rebound effect to determine ultimate outcomes, here in the context of international technology transfer policy. The transfer of technologies is as likely to simply move developing countries more rapidly down the same development path as it is to alter the choices they make along that path. For this reason, the transfer of resource-conserving technologies, without incentives provided to alter development priorities, may not result in any resource-conservation at all.

Financial Planning for College: Parental Preparation and Capital Conversion

This study explores the conversion of cultural capital into economic capital, and specifically financial capital in the form of parental financial planning for children’s college education, including reported financial preparations and savings. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002), logistic regression-based analyses of aspects of cultural capital indicated that parental involvement exhibited the most prevalent relationship with financial planning and the amount saved, and that parents’ expectations, but not their aspirations, corresponded to engagement in financial planning. Findings support the conclusion that some parents convert part of their cultural capital to financial capital in preparation for paying for their child’s college education, perhaps representing a typically hidden facet of social class reproduction.

EFFECTS OF WORKING CAPITAL CYCLE ON PROFITABILITY OF MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN GHANA

Purpose: The study was on the effects of working capital cycle on profitability of manufacturing firms in Ghana.Methodology: The research design used in this study was explanatory research design. There are 78 large manufacturing firms in Loan Book of Barclays Bank Ghana. The population of the study is therefore 78 firms. The sampling frame was the loan book of Barclays Bank Ghana. It is for this reason that the study considered 50% of the population to be the sample size. This yielded 39 large manufacturing firms. The study used secondary data only for the purposes of analysis and drawing of conclusions. Descriptive statistics included mean scores and inferential statistics included regression modeling.Results: Results show that there is a negative relationship between profit before tax and mean debtor’s collection period whose beta coefficients is -1817.81. Results show that there is a negative relationship between profit before tax and mean inventory conversion period whose beta coefficients is -103.762. The mean payable deferral period had a positive relationship with profitability with a beta coefficient of 1097.073. The findings show that there is a negative relationship between profit before tax and working capital conversion cycle with a beta coefficient of -816.198.Policy recommendation: It was recommended that speeding up payments to suppliers might increase profitability because firms often receive a substantial discount for prompt payment.It was also recommended that the government should intervene by way of a legislation that would impose penalty interest for delayed payment of commercial debts. Such a provision would create a level playing field by binding all firms to pay promptly and ease the cash flow problems of small firms, who will be compensated for any overdue payments. It was recommended that the owners of firms be made more aware and trained on the best credit management practice. That way, they could reduce the amount of overdue debt and alleviate the problem.

Celebrity Capital of Actresses of Color: A Mixed Methods Study

Is colorism in Hollywood a problem? A pilot study was conducted on two actresses, dark-skinned actress Lupita Nyong’o who won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2014 for her portrayal of a slave Patsey in the 2013 movie “12 Years a Slave,” 2013, and light-skinned actress Halle Berry who won Best Actress Oscar in 2002 for her portrayal of a widow Leticia Musgrove in the 2001 movie “Monster’s Ball.” Data obtained from the mixed-methods design employed in the study found a significant difference in how often an actress’ complexion was used in a news story and how they were described using the language of racial capital. Contrary to expectations set by understanding of the concept of colorism, darker-skinned Nyong’o’s racial capital was stated in the news less prominently than the racial capital of lighter-skinned Berry. Actresses’ celebrity capital and ways of conversion of capital is visualized in Venn diagrams.

Capital Conversion in the Organized Crime of the Favelas

Segregated in the hills of Rio de Janeiro, favelas are socially and economically marginalized slums, with pervasive drug crime. As a result of limited government intervention, drug lords assume the mandate in these sectors, reinforcing poverty and social exclusion.Traditional approaches to poverty analyze this context with capital scarcity as a point of reference. Moreover, the concept of capital has been used to denounce structural inequalities that are reproduced in social classes. By the same token, it is argued that the accumulation of capital may lead to social mobility. Low-income neighborhoods have their own resources and forms of mobilization. Conditions of precariousness can be explored without focusing on the absence of resources, but rather on the ways in which local capital gets mobilized and converted. In the favelas, drug gangs have their own capital dynamics that make them acquire and retain control over the territory. In this paper, I examine how capital conversion and mobilization among members of organized crime in these districts of Rio de Janeiro reinforce structural inequalities by perpetuating social exclusion.

Architecture, symbolic capital and elite mobilisations: The case of the Royal Bank of Scotland corporate campus

In this article, we apply the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu, in particular forms of capital, social fields, field of power and modes of domination, to demonstrate how the study of a symbolically powerful building can provide insights into what are often opaque elite interactions. In order to do this, we focus on the corporate campus headquarters of a powerful financial institution, the Royal Bank of Scotland in the context of Scotland in the period 2000–2009. We pose the following questions: What is the relationship between corporate space and the field of power? What role does a corporate building play in circuits of capital conversion? What does this case tell us about the role of architecture in elite mobilisations? In addressing these questions, we contribute to critical organisation studies by identifying and theorising the role of corporate space in inter-elite dynamics and circuits of capital conversion. This approach, we argue, provides a methodological lever which could be applied to other symbolically important buildings in order to understand the nature and role of inter-field interactions in the conception and realisation of such buildings.

Painting the full picture: The conversion of economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital

This article explores how and why entrepreneurs convert their available economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. We utilise Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a conceptual framework to explore the lived experiences of 10 craft entrepreneurs. This study reveals that transforming capital is a natural and enjoyable process, with our findings highlighting the convertible, multifaceted nature of different forms of capital. We also uncover previously unidentified forms of capital conversions and demonstrate that the conversion process can involve multiple forms of capital. Furthermore, our findings show that craft entrepreneurs give no primacy to economic capital, whose transformations form part of a larger process of capital conversion.

Narrativity, temporality, and consumer-identity transformation through tourism

Research on the self draws from structure vs. agency theoretical positions, while overlooking issues of temporality in outlining motivation and resistance toward identity transformation. The study builds on Ricoeur’s and Bourdieu’s specific attempts to overcome social determinism vs. existential determinism options alongside their focus on the role of temporality in identity formation to investigate consumers’ narratives of identity transformation through travel. A long ethnography involving multiple interviews with repeat Western tourists in the Dominican Republic illuminates the transformative flux fostered by the tourism experience. Examining the intersection between identity and temporality as a much overlooked topic, this research contributes three theoretical insights: First, enduring, situational, and composite identity transformations as well as stasis structure consumers’ narrations. The study provides and extends Ricoeur’s theory outlining that idem and ipse are activated differently depending on the type of identity transformation. Second, in contrast with Bourdieu’s assertion that cultural capital is the hardest one to acquire late in life, the study shows late cultural capital accumulation does not necessarily impede identity (trans)formation. Yet, Bourdieu’s understanding of reflexivity as a habitual position, which bestows advantage in certain fields, applies and facilitates cultural capital conversion or successful identity motions. Third, the study acknowledges the role of the gap between habitus and new field entrance in identity transformation, yet reveals the importance of habituated practices and the necessity of entering the “new” field repeatedly to gain agency and change one’s behavior over time.

COCO BONDS PRICING WITH CREDIT AND EQUITY CALIBRATED FIRST-PASSAGE FIRM VALUE MODELS

Since the beginning of the credit and liquidity crisis, financial institutions have been considering creating a convertible-bond type contract focusing on capital. Under the terms of this contract, a bond is converted into equity if the authorities deem the institution to be under-capitalized. This paper discusses this contingent capital (CoCo) bond instrument and presents a pricing methodology based on firm value models that calibrate exactly the credit term structure of the issuer either through credit default swaps or corporate bonds data. Decorrelation between the capital conversion trigger and credit quality is introduced. The equity value for the issuer is derived in closed form with a barrier option type formula. A stress test of model parameters is illustrated to account for potential model risk and the obtained prices are compared to the price obtained from a market source. Finally, a brief overview of how the instrument valuation performs compared to pure corporate bonds and a discussion involving the CDS bond basis are presented.

Fixed Prices and Regulatory Discretion as Triggers for Contingent Capital Conversion: An Experimental Examination

An unresolved issue regarding the implementation of 'contingent capital' bonds regards identifying the best mechanism for triggering the conversion of debt into equity. This paper reports a laboratory experiment that builds on previous work to evaluate the relative desirability of two leading candidate mechanisms: a price informed regulator and a mechanistic fixed-price trigger. We find that the conversion rule in effect determines the desirability of these two mechanisms. When the conversion increases incumbent equity value, a fixed trigger is preferable, but when the conversion decreases value, the reverse holds. Two modifications for improving the regulator mechanism, creating regulator bias (e.g., giving a regulator asymmetric rewards over intervention) and probabilistically providing a regulator with non-market information, only enhance this result.

Money Cares. Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Finnish Social Services Sector

In this article, actions within care marketization are conceptualized as institutional entrepreneurship contesting the present practices of care production. Practices of selling and buying care are described, and the underlying power relations in two care marketization models are analyzed: outsourcing and the so called ‘second wave’, i.e. the customer choice model, in Finland. Drawing from Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural, symbolic, social and economic capital, the article highlights the relevance of capital conversions for understanding institutional entrepreneurship. It is argued that the positions and opportunities to gain a more powerful position are not solely field intern conceptions, but can be related to macro level conceptions. Exploiting such opportunities questions the challenging conception of institutional entrepreneurship, itself. Instead, it is suggested that institutional entrepreneurship can also be conceived as legitimate challenging which points that challenging and conforming may not be necessary to be separated.

Fixed Prices and Regulatory Discretion as Triggers for Contingent Capital Conversion: An Experimental Examination

An unresolved issue regarding the implementation of 'contingent capital' bonds regards identifying the best mechanism for triggering the conversion of debt into equity. This paper reports a laboratory experiment that builds on previous work to evaluate the relative desirability of two leading candidate mechanisms: a price informed regulator and a mechanistic fixed-price trigger. We find that the conversion rule in effect determines the desirability of these two mechanisms. When the conversion increases incumbent equity value, a fixed trigger is preferable, but when the conversion decreases value, the reverse holds. Two modifications for improving the regulator mechanism, creating regulator bias (e.g., giving a regulator asymmetric rewards over intervention) and probabilistically providing a regulator with non-market information, only enhance this result.

Resilient and Inclusive Prosperity within Planetary Boundaries

AbstractThe current model of economic growth generated unprecedented increases in human wealth and prosperity during the 19th and 20th centuries. The main mechanisms have been the rapid pace of technological and social innovation, human capital accumulation, and the conversion of resources and natural capital into more valuable forms of produced capital. However, there is evidence emerging that this model may be approaching environmental limits and planetary boundaries, and that the conversion of natural capital needs to slow down rapidly and then be reversed. Some commentators have asserted that in order for this to occur, we will need to stop growing altogether and, instead, seek prosperity without growth. Others argue that environmental concerns are low‐priority luxuries to be contemplated once global growth has properly returned to levels observed prior to the 2008 financial crisis. A third group argues that there is no trade‐off, and, instead, promotes green growth: the (politically appealing) idea is that we can simultaneously grow and address our environmental problems. This paper provides a critical perspective on this debate and suggests that a substantial research agenda is required to come to grips with these challenges. One place to start is with the relevant metrics: measures of per‐capita wealth, and, eventually, quantitative measures of prosperity, alongside a dashboard of other sustainability indicators. A public and political focus on wealth (a stock), and its annual changes, could realistically complement the current focus on market‐based gross output as measured by GDP (a flow). This could have important policy implications, but deeper changes to governance and business models will be required.

Analysing corporate insolvency in the Gulf Cooperation Council using logistic regression and multidimensional scaling

In this paper, we examine corporate insolvency in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region between 2004 and 2011. Data comprises 28 financial ratio variables from 112 firms. We use Logit regression with best-subset selection criteria to investigate the predictive value of the ratios in the GCC context, particularly cash flow-based ratios. We also examine the main dimensions of the ratios, and the weights firms attach to them, using 3-way Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). We find that a parsimonious Logit model with the profitability ratio EBITTL, the leverage ratio TLTA and the cash flow ratios CFFOTA and CFFOCL can predict insolvency, ex-ante, with 84.8, 95.6 and 73.9 % overall, type I and II accuracy, respectively. From MDS, we uncover four financial-ratio dimensions: (i) ‘Non-strategic sales activities’, (ii) ‘Profitability and financial stability balance’, (iii) ‘Sales activities against capital conversion’; and (iv) ‘Market value against cash generation’. Insolvent firms appear very specific and attach most salience to the ‘Non-strategic sales activities’ dimension, unlike solvent firms which attach more salience to the other three dimensions. Therefore, the results imply that, to reduce susceptibility to insolvency in the GCC, managers should focus less on non-strategic sales activities.

Capitalism without Capital: Capital Conversion and Market Making in Rural China

AbstractSituated in an agricultural township in northern China, this study examines the rise of produce markets in rural China in the face of a chronic shortage of financial capital. Drawing on theoretical ideas in economic sociology, we explicate the mechanisms of gift exchange and credit taking and the conditions under which these mechanisms are used to mobilize financial capital and to facilitate market transactions in the absence of financial capital. We illustrate these issues and ideas using our fieldwork research on different produce markets and entrepreneurial activities.

We signed up for a different Lithuania : politics of history in the post-soviet trajectories of the Lithuanian cultural intelligentsia

Soviet history becomes a multiple resource for recognizing or defining the contemporary threats to Lithuania as well as leading to specific strategies. All this combines (1) the successful experience in the demolition of the Soviet system; (2) the perception of an ongoing Cold War; and (3) the escalation of a sense of blame for the Soviet period. By applying discourse analysis, this article reveals some dominating post-Soviet trajectories of those Soviet Lithuanians working in the field of culture who participated in the national revival. The analysis shows how a few key analytical categories (totalitarianism, ethnicity) are practically exploited in these trajectories and how they influence the growing usage of the politics of history in the Lithuanian public sphere.Ethnic mobilization activities engaged in during Soviet times by some intelligentsia members became favorable criteria for engaging in the national revival movement at the end of the 80s. Capital conversion, being the face of changes or even being the moral authority (for example, Justinas Marcinkevičius or Vytautas Landsbergis) apparently legitimized their authority and the cultural leaders‘ exclusive right to articulate the foundations of a new system or to openly criticize the weakening Soviet system. The national question for a time overlapped with the ideas of a free market and liberalism. Today we observe the process of trying to move away from the dominance of the liberal path, calling it the wrong trajectory on which to proceed in the post-Soviet period (“we fought for different Lithuania”). This re-positioning includes a wide range of Soviet intelligentsia members who were also part of Sąjudis. This new position shares a critical approach towards Western influence. Their rhetoric evokes parallels with the past (e.g., the old empire has been replaced by a new empire; a new center is aspiring to greater power, etc.). Their cultural-social capital provides them with the legitimacy to articulate emerging political threats and gives them an opportunity to become saviors again and to use their know how of the 80s in a new situation.However, these cultural leaders not only pose challenges but also face them. A neoconservative line actively emphasizes the responsibilities of cultural leaders who once served the Soviet system and demands that this fact be appropriately evaluated in contemporary society. This line uses ‘totalitarianism’ as a practical category, aiming ro reveal the ‘evil empire’ and calling for a preventive strategy against current Russian imperialist designs. It also sees the “self-centered” trajectories of former Soviet cultural elites as inadequate in the context of geopolitical rivalries and growing tensions between the Russian world and U.S. allies. In this perspective the “ethnicity” category is seen as promoting localism and preventing rapid westernization. The neoconservative line also attempts to correct the development of Lithuanian liberalism by criticising the latter‘s too strong engagement on behalf of the right to individual self-expression and too little regard for collective engagement.By working out these influences of two competing lines of post-Soviet intellectual development, the politics of history in Lithuania will carry on at a high level and will further use “Soviet history” and “Soviet experiences” as a resource for political or personal strategies.