Showing papers by "Danny Miller published in 2021"

Home Possessions: material culture behind closed doors

Abstract: 1. Behind Closed Doors Daniel Miller (Professor of Anthropology, University College London) 2. Social Aspirations in North London Alison J. Clarke (Royal College of Art) 3. Organised Disorder: Moving Furniture in Norwegian Homes Pauline Garvey (University College London) 4. The Refurbishment of Memory Jean-Sebastien Marcoux (University College London) 5. The Taste of Home Elia Petridou (University College London) 6. Possessions Daniel Miller (University College London) 7. Home Sweet Home: Tangible Memories of an Uprooted Childhood Anat Hecht (University College London) 8. Building Conjugal Relationships: The Devotion to Houses amongst the Paiwan of Taiwan Chang-Kwo Tan (University College London) 9. A Man Will Get Furnished: Wood and Domesticity in Urban Romania Adam Drazin (University College London) 10. The 'Untidy' House in Japan Inge Daniels (University College London) Index

Family Business Growth Around the World

Abstract: Growth is important for the long-term success of a business. Regrettably, the impact of family influence on firm growth is largely neglected. We examine whether family firms have a higher growth ra...

Family Firms: A Breed of Extremes?:

Abstract: Conflicts in the family business literature abound due to the breed’s heterogeneity. However, a key aspect of heterogeneity has been ignored—a tendency for many family firms to gravitate toward unu...

Back to the future: The effect of returning family successions on firm performance

Abstract: We study successions from a non-family CEO back to a family CEO, which we label “Type-R” successions. In our sample of 489 Italian family firms experiencing the departure of nonfamily CEOs, these successions represent 42% of all cases. Our difference-in-differences results indicate that family firms undertaking Type-R successions experience an 18% improvement in profitability. Exploring the heterogeneity underlying this result, we find that Type-R successions produce weaker results in contexts that are highly volatile and that rely on innovative inputs before succession. Finally, in studying the drivers of the performance increase we find that Type-R successions reduce labor costs and spur efficiency. Collectively, our evidence suggests that Type-R successions improve performance by leveraging family assets while avoiding dysfunctional nepotism and other parochial family priorities.

Are Socially Responsible Firms Associated with Socially Responsible Citizens? A Study of Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Abstract: The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber (Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978 (Translation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 1922)), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways-by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) behavior by local firms and the social distancing (SD) of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were (a) long-established, (b) isomorphic in their CSR, and (c) major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities.

Top management team time horizon blending and organizational ambidexterity

Abstract: We focus on the strategic implications of executive time horizons on a top management team. We argue that time horizon mean and diversity individually and interactively influence organizational amb...

A theory of a theory of the smartphone

Abstract: This article addresses the consequences of theory in social science. It suggests that theory has become fetishized and contributes to class differentiation as most people are excluded from its incr...

Alienation among Management Scholars

Abstract: A l’aide d’une synthese conceptuelle d’un vaste corpus de litterature, les auteurs explorent les facteurs d’alienation chez les enseignants-chercheurs en gestion a travers le prisme d’un modele classique du chemin-objectif (path-goal) de la motivation. Certains enseignants-chercheurs se sont desengages de la recherche en raison du contexte sociopolitique entourant l’exercice de la publication. Bien que leurs plaintes prises individuellement soient irritantes, collectivement, elles peuvent constituer durant une carriere un calvaire rempli de difficultes cumulees aggravantes – « une tempete parfaite » – qui eloignent definitivement les enseignants-chercheurs de la production de recherche universitaire. Pour mieux comprendre ce processus, les auteurs montrent l’interaction pernicieuse de ces defis dans un modele de l’attente des couts, des risques et des recompenses, chacun devoilant plusieurs des facteurs d’alienation repertories dans le livre de Blauner (1964) – l’absence de sens, l’impuissance, l’alienation de soi et l’isolement. Ils concluent en suggerant des conditions attenuantes, des propositions syntheses et des mesures correctives.

An Open Pediatric Brain Tumor Atlas

Abstract: Introduction Introduction will go here. Materials and Methods Biospecimen collection The Pediatric Brain Tumor Atlas specimens are comprised of samples from Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC) and the Pediatric Paci c Neuro-oncology Consortium (PNOC). Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC) The CBTTC [1] is a collaborative, multi-institutional (16 institutions worldwide) research program dedicated to the study of childhood brain tumors. All CBTTC data can be download from the Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center, [2]. The de-identi ed patient’s blood and tumor tissue were prospectively collected by the consortium from patients enrolled within the CBTTC. The cell lines were generated by the CBTTC from either fresh tumor tissue obtained directly from surgery performed at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) or from prospectively collected tumor specimens stored in Recover Cell Culture Freezing media (cat# 12648010, Gibco). The tissue was dissociated using enzymatic method with papain as described [3]. Brie y, tissue was washed with HBSS (cat# 14175095, Gibco), minced and incubated with activated papain solution (cat# LS003124, SciQuest) for up to 45 minutes. The papain was inactivated using ovomucoid solution (cat# 542000, SciQuest), tissue was brie y treated with DNase (cat# 10104159001, Sigma) and passed through the 100μm cell strainer (cat# 542000, Greiner Bio-One). Two cell culture conditions were initiated based on the number of cells available. For cultures utilizing the fetal bovine serum (FBS), a minimum density of 3×10^5 cells/ml were plated in DMEM/F-12 medium (cat# D8062, Sigma) supplemented with 20% FBS (cat# SH30910.03, Hyclone), 1% GlutaMAX (cat# 35050061, Gibco), Penicillin/Streptomycin-Amphotericin B Mixture (cat# 17-745E, Lonza) and 0.2% Normocin (cat# antnr-2, Invivogen). For the serum-free media conditions cells were plated at minimum density of 1×10^6 cells/ml in DMEM/F12 media supplemented with 1% GlutaMAX, 1x B-27 supplement minus vitamin A (cat# 12587-010, Gibco), 1x N-2 supplement (cat# 17502001, Gibco), 20 ng/ml epidermal growth factor (cat# PHG0311L, Gibco), 20 ng/ml basic broblast growth factor (cat# 100-18B, PeproTech), 2.5μg/ml heparin (cat# H3149, Sigma), Penicillin/Streptomycin-Amphotericin B Mixture and 0.2% Normocin. Paci c Pediatric Neuro-oncology Consortium (PNOC) The Paci c Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium (PNOC) is an international consortium dedicated to bringing new therapies to children and young adults with brain tumors. PNOC collected blood and tumor biospecimens from newly-diagnosed di use intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) patients as part of the clinical trial PNOC003/NCT02274987 [4]. Nucleic acids extraction and library preparation PNOC samples The Translational Genomic Research Institute (TGEN; Phoenix, AZ) performed DNA and RNA extractions on tumor biopsies using a DNA/RNA AllPrep Kit (Qiagen, #80204). All RNA used for library prep had a minimum RIN of 7 but no QC thresholds were implemented for the DNA. For library preparation, 500ng of nucleic acids were used as input for RNA-Seq, WXS, and targeted DNA panel (panel). The RNA prep was performed using the TruSeq RNA Sample Prep Kit (Illumina, #FC-122-1001) and the exome prep was performed using KAPA Library Preparation Kit (Kapa Biosystems, #KK8201) using Agilent’s SureSelect Human All Exon V5 backbone with custom probes. The targeted DNA panel developed by Ashion (formerly known as the GEM Cancer panel) consisted of exonic probes against 541 cancer genes. Both panel and WXS assays contained 44,000 probes across evenly spaced genomic loci used for genome-wide copy number analysis. For the panel, additional probes tiled across intronic regions of 22 known tumor suppressor genes and 22 genes involved in common cancer translocations for structural analysis. All extractions and library preparations were performed according to manufacturer’s instructions.

The anthropology of social media

Abstract: The phrase ‘social networking sites’ suggested a strong affinity with the discipline of anthropology itself. Digital anthropology must constantly avoid the temptation to simplify or romanticise the predigital world. Social media has become one of the most conspicuous examples of the internet as representing ‘the death of distance’. Social media may form just one part of larger online projects. In many instances diaspora populations are trying to relate back to an original homeland that may have been destroyed, and part of their reconstruction as a community consists of the virtual reconstruction of their place of origin. Anthropologists alongside academics in other disciplines are also investigating the role of social media in situations of forced migration and displacement. Anthropologists often work with diaspora populations and have found that social media are just as important for longer-term sustained connectivity.

Back to the Future: The Effect of Returning Family Successions on Firm Performance

Abstract: We study successions from a non-family CEO back to a family CEO, which we label “Type-R” successions. In our sample of 489 Italian family firms experiencing the departure of nonfamily CEOs, these successions represent 42% of all cases. Our difference-in-differences results indicate that family firms undertaking Type-R successions experience an 18% improvement in profitability. Exploring the heterogeneity underlying this result, we find that Type-R successions produce weaker results in contexts that are highly volatile and that rely on innovative inputs before succession. Finally, in studying the drivers of the performance increase we find that Type-R successions reduce labor costs and spur efficiency. Collectively, our evidence suggests that Type-R successions improve performance by leveraging family assets while avoiding dysfunctional nepotism and other parochial family priorities.

The Global Smartphone: Beyond a Youth Technology

Abstract: The smartphone is often literally right in front of our nose, so you would think we would know what it is. But do we? To find out, 11 anthropologists each spent 16 months living in communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, focusing on the take up of smartphones by older people. Their research reveals that smartphones are technology for everyone, not just for the young. The Global Smartphone presents a series of original perspectives deriving from this global and comparative research project. Smartphones have become as much a place within which we live as a device we use to provide ‘perpetual opportunism’, as they are always with us. The authors show how the smartphone is more than an ‘app device’ and explore differences between what people say about smartphones and how they use them. The smartphone is unprecedented in the degree to which we can transform it. As a result, it quickly assimilates personal values. In order to comprehend it, we must take into consideration a range of national and cultural nuances, such as visual communication in China and Japan, mobile money in Cameroon and Uganda, and access to health information in Chile and Ireland – all alongside diverse trajectories of ageing in Al Quds, Brazil and Italy. Only then can we know what a smartphone is and understand its consequences for people’s lives around the world.

Early-Onset Spinal Deformity in Neurofibromatosis Type 1: Natural History, Treatment, and Imaging Surveillance.

Abstract: ¼: Early-onset scoliosis (EOS) or kyphosis is common in patients with neurofibromatosis (NF) and is characterized by rapid progression of deformity. ¼: Traditional growing rods provide good functional and deformity outcomes in patients with NF and EOS; magnetically controlled growing rods (MCGRs) also provide good deformity correction, although high rates of revision have been reported after their use. ¼: Among patients with NF type 1 (NF1), morphologic characteristics of the spinal deformity are different in those with paraspinal neurofibromas than in those without paraspinal tumors. ¼: Patients with NF1 are at low risk for developing malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors during childhood (<1%) and their lifetime (8% to 12%), and routine imaging surveillance for malignancy in the absence of symptoms should be clinically directed. ¼: Further investigation is needed to standardize screening for EOS in children with NF1 and to develop guidelines for ideal imaging modalities, including their frequency and a timeline.

Six principles for a digital anthropology

Abstract: This chapter proposes six basic principles as the foundation for a new subdiscipline: digital anthropology. The term digital will be defined as all that which can be ultimately reduced to binary code but which produces a further proliferation of particularity and difference. The dialectic refers to the relationship between this growth in universality and particularity and the intrinsic connections between their positive and negative effects. The commitment to holism, the foundation of anthropological perspectives on humanity, represents a third principle. The alternative argument is that most people are not particularly involved in or concerned with issues involved in coding or digital production. Australian aboriginal tribes may not have much material culture, but instead they use their landscape to create extraordinary and complex cosmologies that then become the order of society and the structures guiding social engagement.

Introduction: Smartphone-based visual normativity: Approaches from digital anthropology and communication studies:

Abstract: In this special issue, we would like to take this opportunity to demonstrate the value and strength of a conversation between digital anthropology and communication studies around the topic of visu...