Moneymakes the worldgo round ISSUE 15 FIFTYFOUR DEGREES Lancaster University Management School | the place to be 20Intoadark onlinerealm 28Whatcanbedone aboutdigitalpoverty? 36Growing up Green Shininga light onglobalmacroeconomic issues
LANCASHIRE CYBER LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME Lancaster University Management School, in collaboration with the School of Computing and Communications, are excited to launch the Lancashire Cyber Leadership Programme, starting in October 2022. This six-month programme will help Lancashire SMEs build their leadership skills, looking into strategy, culture and operations within their business and introducing essential cyber security knowledge to avoid digital threats, risks and data breaches. Contact us for more information: lancaster.ac.uk/lums/lancashire-cyber-leadership lancashireforum@lancaster.ac.uk | 01524 593712
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 3 4 In this issue... 40 An interesting conundrum for Islamic banking InWesternbanking, thepayment of interest onborrowingand investment transactions is standardpractice. But, as GerrySteeleexplains, this isnot thecase in Islamicbanking–with interestingeffects onhow financial transactionsoccur. 44 Opening up newhorizons Professors James Faulconbridge and Martin Spring look at the challenges and misconceptions facing professional services firms as they look to adopt Artificial Intelligence into their processes, and how it might help them expand to new horizons. Growing up green A study fromProfessor Margaret Hogg and colleagues in France investigates the factors that play a role in children’s interest and participation in environmental activities, and found a supportive extended family network is essential if they are to actively engage. 16 Majormacroeconomic issues in the spotlight Professor Lorenza Rossi andDrs Stefano Fasani andGiorgioMotta exploremacroeconomic issues and policies that have found themselves under scrutinymore than ever before. 6 Creating a female space in an antifeminist realm Dr Judith Fathallah investigates how users can successful adopt female identities and become part of the 4chan community. 10 Let us tell you a story… Dr BingbingGe and Professor AlfredoDe Massis show just how firms can use the past to their benefit – even if previous generations had no involvement in the present-day companies. What can we learn about credit risk from accounting numbers? DrArgyroPanaretouexplainshowa switch inmeasurement basis canprovide abetter insight intoa firm’s credit risk. 32 24 Crossing theDigital Divide TheWork Foundation’s TrinleyWalker explains new research that shows what can be done to help rural communities become better connected. 28 20 36 Foreword Executive Dean Professor Claire Leitch praises the high standards of research in LUMS, reflected in recent REF results. The hidden resilience of family firms Research centre leaders Professor Jan Bebbington, Dr Allan Discua Cruz, Ben Harrison and Professor Valerie Stead collaborated to reflect on themany issues affecting family businesses. Driven to International Expansion There has been a rise in international expansionby firms based inSub-Saharan Africa. Dr DavidOludotun Fasanya interviewed senior executives to explore why these firms are exploring new horizons.
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We have long known the power, reach and impact of Lancaster University Management School’s research – and Fifty Four Degrees has served to demonstrate this in recent years, by sharing our work with you. This strength and depth of our research culture was emphasised by the recent Research Excellence Framework 2021 results. Once more, we have been recognised as the top business school in the UK for research power – a measure of both the quality of research and the number of high-level researchers in our team. We are also one of only three business schools with a 100% rating for our research environment, and one of just two to have received that rating in the last two REF, demonstrating the longevity of our standards. This level of research excellence is presented in every issue of Fifty Four Degrees, and this one is no different. It features work from researchers early in their careers and those with a strong track record dating back many years – all are able to flourish and succeed within LUMS. We are delighted to be hosting leading macroeconomists from around the world in the School for the annual Dynare Conference this summer. They will be discussing key issues facing the world’s economies, and Lorenza Rossi, Stefano Fasani and Giorgio Motta explore those factors – such as the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine – in our cover article. It is always a pleasure to welcome colleagues and experts from across Europe and beyond to LUMS, as was the case in our recent Resilience and Family Business seminar in the wonderful surroundings of Lancaster Castle. Researchers from Italy, France and New Zealand were among those to take part, alongside representatives from the family business sphere. The event was a collaboration between four of our research centres, and their Directors – Jan Bebbington, Allan Discua Cruz, Ben Harrison and Valerie Stead – explore the issues in an expanded article. Bingbing Ge was one of those to attend the event, and you can read Bingbing’s research with Alfredo De Massis on the importance of family history for these firms in these pages too. As well as making you think, their work on the family behind a successful Chinese restaurant firmwill likely leave you keen for a meal out some time soon as well. Within LUMS, we pride ourselves on tackling difficult and important issues. Judith Fathallah’s work certainly falls into both categories. Judith has looked at the online forum 4chan, where a culture of misogyny has not prevented female users establishing a presence. By looking at how and why these users operate in a hostile environment, Judith learns many important lessons about the value of belonging, and about howmany different people can hold differing views – no matter how uncomfortable they may be to others. Our former PhD student David Fasanya’s work provides similarly telling insights into why western views should not be imposed on our perceptions of the rest of the world. David, working alongside colleagues in our Department of Economics, explored how and why firms in Sub-Saharan Africa are internationalising. What he found showed that these firms have motives beyond what we might expect in Europe and North America, and demonstrates just why we must find out first-hand what motivates people in these geographies, rather than foisting our assumptions upon them. Finally, you can enjoy research fromGerry Steele on the Islamic banking system; Margaret Hogg – whose recent retirement has not stopped her output – on how children develop environmental behaviours; Argyro Panaretou on how accounting can help assess credit risk; the Work Foundation’s Trinley Walker on digital poverty; and James Faulconbridge and Martin Spring’s exploration of Artificial Intelligence in professional services firms. I hope you enjoy this insight into our work, and we look forward to bringing you more in the future. Professor Claire Leitch is the Executive Dean, Lancaster University Management School c.leitch@lancaster.ac.uk Foreword Welcome oncemore to Fifty Four Degrees. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 5 Subscribe online at lancaster.ac.uk/fiftyfour SUBSCRIBE
6 | With theCovid-19 pandemic and thewar in Ukraine placing global economies under unprecedented pressures, macroeconomic issues and policies have found themselves under scrutiny more than ever before. Ahead of theDynare Conference at Lancaster UniversityManagement School, Professor LorenzaRossi and Drs Stefano Fasani and GiorgioMotta explore important topics that will be the focus of attention. SHININGALIGHT ONMAJOR MACROECONOMIC ISSUES
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Formany years, new figures and issues concerningmacroeconomics have been covered in newspapers, onTVand –more recently – on social media. Recessions, market surges – and falls – and government policies fill column inches, can lead news bulletins, and provoke discussionswith contacts and friends. But even if there have been spikes of engagement with the world of macroeconomics, general interest in such issues and questions has never been as high as it is now. The recent economic slump triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected both consumers and businesses. Meanwhile, governments and central banks have been asked to react promptly to alleviate disruptions to the real economy. Then, after two difficult years, as most of the world’s advanced countries started their recovery from the pandemic’s economic effects, a huge surge in inflation and the further geopolitical consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war have posed new challenges for their recoveries. Covid’s globe-spanning consequences of lockdowns and an entire shift in the way businesses, governments and societies operated led policymakers to address the slow pace of economies in a context of extremely low-interest rates. But just as some nations started to return to life in a way more like that pre-pandemic, the scenario suddenly changed for them once again with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Skyrocketing prices for consumer goods and commodities – from fuel supplies to our homes and for our vehicles to products on the shelves of our local supermarket – imply new challenges for policymaking. Here in the UK, for instance, the rise in the Consumer Prices Index during the first months of 2022 has been the highest it has been in the last 30 years. In this new economic scenario, policy measures will adapt to address rising inflation without curbing the economic recovery that was still under way from the pandemic. ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS Meanwhile, there is growing evidence suggesting the period of relative climate stability is ending. The links between the economy and climate issues are by nature complex and mutating. Many different sectors and industries are expected to be adversely affected by climate change, creating new challenges for both local and global policymaking. Future scenarios are characterised by great uncertainty about the policies to be implemented to mitigate the consequences of climate change, and substantial changes in the structure of the economy are likely to be undertaken. For example, global warming is associated with damaging climatic events that may impact specific prices, notably food, energy, and commodity prices, and thus inflation. Furthermore, higher temperatures may dampen economic activity and reduce labour productivity, and this may reduce long-term growth potential and equilibrium interest rates, restricting the available space for conventional monetary policy. Although central banks are not the primary actors in the fight to prevent climate change, they can play an important supporting role for price stability and in the transition to netzero gas emissions. For example, both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England include a climate action plan in their agendas. A global call for answers to these challenges is feeding a fast-expanding strand of macroeconomic research focused on estimating, modelling, and quantifying interactions between climate change, policymaking, and the financial system. Moreover, the uncertainty generated in this situation will affect the economic response to recovery measures. Studying the effects of uncertainty on policy transmission and business dynamism is one of the key challenges for modern macroeconomic research. 8 |
We come from decades of slow but constant structural changes, involving the decline in share of income going to workers, the increase in firms’ markups and profits - which is accompanied by productivity slowdown - lower GDP growth, and increased income and wealth inequality. Recent years have seen renewed interest in the potential macroeconomic effects of market power. Strong empirical evidence has been found on broad growth inmeasured profit rates, price-cost margins, and concentration since at least 2000, if not even earlier. These increases in firms’ market power were accompanied by drops in measured investment rates, firmentry rates, and labour’s share of income. These patterns have originated a new macroeconomic debate in a topic traditionally confined to the microeconomic realmof the single industry or market. If market power has increased globally, this is likely to lower consumers’ welfare and the economywide wellbeing including investment, innovation, total output, and the distribution of income. DYNARE CONFERENCE All of these issues will be analysed at the 16th annual Dynare Conference, which we will host here at Lancaster UniversityManagement School at the end of June and start of July. The Dynare Conference is a wellestablished event among leading experts in macroeconomics, hosting presentations from both scholars in academia and policymakers on relevant current topics. This editionwill host presentations of papers onmonetary and fiscal policy response, inequality, business dynamism and structural changes, and green economy transition, among others. Keynote speakers will be Professor Jan Eeckhout (University of Pompeu Fabra) and Professor Silvana Tenreyro (London School of Economics, Bank of England). Both bring extensive research and practical knowledge from across the macroeconomic sphere, and their work is at the heart of what is important to face the next global economic challenges (see panel). FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 9 Professor Silvana Tenreyro is a leading expert in monetary policy and economic growth. She serves as an external member of the Bank of England’sMonetary Policy Committee and is Professor at London School of Economics. Among her other roles, she is President of the European EconomicAssociation, a former co-director and boardmember of the Reviewof Economic Studies, andChair of theWomen’s Committee of the Royal Economics Society. Her works on inflation have been influential both in academia and in policy circles. Her papers on volatility and development have also focused on the contribution of technological diversification and the role of shocks affecting developing and developed economies emerging in the growth process. Professor Jan Eeckhout’s research expertise centres around labour markets and the macroeconomic implications of market power. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, FT, The New York Times and Bloomberg. In his recent book The Profit Paradox, he explains clearly howmarket power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. Expert Insight Professor Lorenza Rossi is Chair in Macroeconomics in the Department of Economics. Dr Stefano Fasani and Dr Giorgio Motta are Lecturers in Macreconomics. The 16th Dynare Conference is hosted by Lancaster University Management School on June 30th and July 1st 2022. The two-day meeting is organised by the LUMS Department of Economics with Banque de France, DSGE-net, and the Dynare project at CEPREMAP. The conference programme will include 19 contributed parallel sessions, with 69 presenters from academia, Central Banks and prestigious policy institutions around the world. l.rossi@lancaster.ac.uk; s.fasani@lancaster.ac.uk; g.motta@lancaster.ac.uk
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 11 Research centre leaders Professor JanBebbington, DrAllanDiscuaCruz, BenHarrison and Professor ValerieStead collaborated recently on a Resilience and Family Business seminar. Their aimwas to uncover and explore connections between their distinctive areas of interest, and open up conversations about recognised and hidden dimensions of organisational life. THEHIDDEN RESILIENCEOF FAMILYFIRMS
Despite the major contribution of family business to the health and well-being of the economy, and the lessons that can be learned from survival and growth over many generations and through multiple external crises, family business is often overlooked in business and management debates, including the insights it can bring to policy. Likewise, the ways in which natural systems underpin all forms of business are not usually to the fore. Participants in our two-day seminar were drawn from sustainability and natural science backgrounds, as well as those specialising in family business, gender and leadership in organisations, and the dynamics of work. Academics, policy-makers and family business practitioners brought their perspectives to the conversation and a series of themes emerged from the discussions. Firstly, resilience has both positive and negative connotations. A negative aspect of resilience, for example, is the persistent gender norms that identify men and women as more or less suitable for different roles, establishing unequal power relations that may prove difficult to change. Such norms prevent businesses making use of all the talent available to them, negatively affecting their ability to respond to adversity. Family businesses, with their entwined family and business relationships, can therefore offer a rich site for understanding complex power relations and how they can be mobilised to develop organisational resilience. These challenges, in particular, were articulated by gender experts from Lancaster (Professor Ellie Hamilton), Nottingham Business School (Professor Sue Marlow) and Dublin City University (Professor MauraMcAdam). Secondly, insights from the natural science participants emphasised the underpinning role of nature for all organisations, even if that contribution is sometimes forgotten or not obvious. This means that organising for resilience must take account of the social-ecological system dynamics and address the climate emergency and the race to net-zero. The contribution from Professor Henrik Österblom (the Science Director of the StockholmResilience Centre) drew out the implications of the Anthropocene (a time where human activity drives global environmental changes, causing ‘earth systems’ to fail and leading to e.g. climate change and biodiversity loss) for organisational theorising. In a similar manner, and drawing from his time working in business, Duncan Pollard (an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business) articulated the distinctive roles that absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity plays in ensuring ecological resilience. Thirdly, seminar participants found that they shared a conceptual framework as the notion of ‘stewardship’ was explored. Stewardship is often used to describe entrepreneurial stewardship, as well as corporate biosphere 12 |
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 stewardship. At the same time, there was unease about this notion as it could be seen as too paternal, with the idea of guardianship being proposed as a possible alternative framing. What both these words imply is a need to take a longer-term perspective of organising, something that often comes more readily to family businesses. Finally, there is the need to think carefully and profoundly about the places where resilience might be located. Place was a theme developed by Susan Murray (the Director of the David Hume Institute) in more depth, providing a clear connection to the ecosystems themes from other speakers, as well as the potentially pivotal role that family business can play in providing economic anchors in local communities. A discussion around place and its relevance for our understanding of resilience of family business also emerged between members of the Family Business Community (Sue Howorth), the chair of family entrepreneurship at Audencia Business School (Professor Miruna RaduLefebvre) and the head of research for the Work Foundation (Melanie Wilkes). The discussion brought to light that environmental, social and economic changes affect family businesses and the places in which they operate, whether they are local or international. Such changes bring challenges in terms of the way family businesses may be managed for the long run, but also highlight the unique resources and strategies family businesses employ to become and remain resilient amidst uncertainty. Our event highlighted the value of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on complex issues, and also the benefit of zooming in and out between different scales. There is a need to maintain a focus on macro challenges while providing insight at mesoorganisational level and into micro everyday practices. At all these scales, economic, social and technological changes will challenge family businesses, alongside their business partners. Moreover, resilience is not solely focused on absorbing change, but also on adaptive and transformative capacity. This makes resilience a useful conceptual tool for examining systems, and what outcomes may be sought by individuals and organisations in these systems. There was also an important recognition that diversity increases resilience, and is required across the social-ecological system and in the routes we take to identify and tackle the challenge of developing more resilient and sustainable organisations. Professor Jan Bebbington is Director of the PentlandCentre for Sustainability inBusiness, the Rubin Chair for Sustainability in Business, and amember of the Department of Accounting and Finance. Dr Allan Discua Cruz is Director of the Centre for FamilyBusiness at Lancaster University, and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy. Ben Harrison is Director of theWork Foundation. Professor Valerie Stead is Director of the Academy for Gender,Work and Leadership, and amember of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy. j.bebbington1@lancaster.ac.uk; a.discuacruz@lancaster.ac.uk; b.harrison1@lancaster.ac.uk; v.stead@lancaster.ac.uk Find out more about the Resilience and Family BusinessWorkshop event here: www.lancaster.ac.uk/pentland/newsand-events/resilience-familybusiness-2022/
Examining gender in relation to resilience and family business is important given that inclusive businesses, those committed to gender equity, tend to be receptive to innovation and change, and are thereforemore resilient in difficult times. Organisational resilience involves being able to anticipate, respond to and learn from adversity. How family members operate the business, make decisions on an everyday basis, and withstand change and crises, is underpinned by family dynamics including gendered roles and power relations. Understanding how families navigate these gendered relations offers insights into complex dynamics that affect the resilience of the business and family wellbeing. Adversity puts family business longevity at risk, placing a spotlight on leadership and succession practices. Deeply embedded in family business culture, these practices are often shaped by primogeniture and gender bias that affect the family business’s ability to flourish and adapt to change. Better understanding of such practices can provide important lessons for building resilience for the long-term sustainability of the business. Professor Valerie Stead, Director of the Academy for Gender, Work and Leadership The study of resiliencematters in the context of family business because there is a growing concern about how family businesses respond to diverse adverse circumstances in different environments. As family businesses represent the dominant business form around the world, our understanding of how different aspects of place (e.g. history, geography, the weather, cultural identity, a region and its expertise) may influence strategies to address adversity andmay also be an opportunity to understand why family businessesmatter for the resilience of particular locations. For instance, businesses in increasingly deprived or disadvantaged contextsmay be at an increased risk of adverse outcomes, including a lack of growth or business failure. Yet some family businesses experiencing adverse conditions develop diverse strategies based on place-based aspects that allow them to overcome challenges and become resilient. Further understanding of aspects of place that influence family business resilience is needed. Our workshop highlighted diverse perspectives that can help family businesses adapt to changing circumstances. The discussions provided a sounding board for reflection on how family firms can becomemore flexible, in terms of available and unique resources, and adjust the way they work under conditions of uncertainty. Dr Allan Discua Cruz, Director of the Centre for Family Business 14 |
FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 15 Sustainability concerns that focus on the resilience of ecological systems are usually interested in two aspects: the time it takes for a systemto return to equilibriumafter an external shock, and the capacity of a systemto absorb shocks and reorganisewhile retaining the same functionality. There is an increasing recognition, however, that the equilibria we relied upon in the past are no longer present with changing ecological baselines. For example, challenges for business arise from climate change impacts, biodiversity changes and changes inmaterial flows (including the loss of resource bases and pollution impacts). The future for sustainability in business research and practice, therefore, will be about how organisations navigate more complex and dynamic ecological contexts, entwined with social and economic dynamics. It is here that family businesses become especially important. Possibilities for corporate biosphere stewardship rely upon business beingmore conscious of environmental matters, as well as accepting responsibilities for ecosystem operations in locations where they operate in or draw resources from. A resilience frame also points towards understanding natural capital dependencies and adopting regenerative business practices. Family businesses are well placed to be at the forefront of these responses. Professor Jan Bebbington, Directorof the ThePentlandCentreforSustainabilityinBusiness Family businesses represent a significant proportion of employers in the UK, providing jobs for 14million people and equating to 50%of all private sector employment. They come in all sizes, operate across all sectors and are based in every region. Many family businesses have been operating for over a century, proving themselves resilient and adaptive to significant economic, social and political change. But we know that as a nation we face further substantive transitions over the coming decades – from the shift to net zero to the rise of automation – which are very likely to fundamentally alter the economy and the world of work, while also presentingmassive challenges and opportunities to local and regional economies. The UK’s family businesses, and those whowork for them, will be in the vanguard of these transitions. Understanding how family businesses can adapt and be resilient to these changes, and what specificallymakes themeither wellplaced or at risk of failing to do so, will be key to developing approaches to policy and practice that support employers and local economies to thrive. In particular, understanding how family businesses can support the wellbeing, development and security of their workforces while also playing a key role in the economic growth of their places will be vital. Ben Harrison, Director of the theWork Foundation
16 | Family businesses canmake great use of their histories to build a customer base and gain advantages against their competitors. Dr BingbingGe and ProfessorAlfredo DeMassis showhow firms can use the past to their benefit – even if previous generations had no involvement in the present-day companies. LETUS TELLYOU ASTORY…
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When you operate a business, you need every competitive advantage you can find. Quality products, good service, wordof-mouth – all play a part in ensuring sustained success. For firms, especially family firms, history can be a distinctive source of competitive advantage, one that is hard for competitors to imitate, and one that can be manipulated. The history of the family business can be more than a straightforward representation of reality, rather it can be crafted and carefully scripted. Family firms build an identity by creating a history suitable for both present and future, for driving or shaping organisational goals. Scripted histories have an important and enduring role in positively influencing external audiences, particularly customers. They can link entrepreneurial initiatives undertaken across generations and businesses, and can create competitive advantages even in a newly-founded business. Generational entrepreneurs can write stories to celebrate and honour the collective achievement of the whole family. Family life stories, such as those told in autobiographies, provide unusually vivid descriptions, often going beyond the business. Stories across generations can legitimise new ventures and build customer trust. A TALE OF SWEET SUCCESS Our focus was on Sweet Mandarin, a Chinese restaurant established by members of a family with a threegeneration entrepreneurial history. You may well have heard of Sweet Mandarin. The skills of founders Lisa and Helen have been recognised by then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron, the Queen, the President of China, and expert chefs like Ken Hom and Gordon Ramsay. Sweet Mandarin was established in 2004, yet it reflects the culmination of a family’s successful history of entrepreneurship, and is well presented as a business with a rich family history. Sweet Mandarin was set up and managed by the third generation, but the family have strategically scripted the previous two generations’ history into their own, emphasising their important role in the business, even if they are not physically present. The family’s life stories began in 1950, when Lily left Hong Kong for the UK as a housemaid. She later opened a restaurant and several take-aways, and her daughter, Mabel, started her own take-away with her husband in the same town. Sweet Mandarin was started by Mabel's daughters, Lisa and Helen. Sweet Mandarin’s competitive advantage is not built purely on the use of their family history, but our studies show how it contributed to increasing the value of the good food and service in the eyes of customers, and it was instrumental in creating customer loyalty in a crowded, dynamic market. When Sweet Mandarin was named Best Local Chinese Restaurant on Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word TV show in 2009, judge Jean Baptiste, said “I think this is really what will bring this place altogether, the fact it is a family-run business, the fact we can see the passion behind and all the drive, to provide such a good experience for the customers.” It is clear the entrepreneurial family history played a key role in the decision. A FAMILY TALE Sweet Mandarin’s family history has been narrated and disseminated through various media – books, TV shows, the news, even a play. We found that Sweet Mandarin’s publications are highly strategic. Lisa and Helen experienced initial difficulties after founding the restaurant, before Helen published Sweet Mandarin: The Courageous True Story of Three Generations of ChineseWomen and Their Journey fromEast toWest – a Times bestseller. It is a combination of Helen’s narrated historical accounts of her grandmother and mother, and a short autobiography of her own generation. Shortly after publication, the business started to gain a reputation. Subsequent cookbook publications include narrations of their life stories. Publishing these books help customers understand and appreciate the business in different ways. Helen and Lisa’s stories always connect family life 18 |
with the business, and readers discover a long, affective and capable multigenerational family in the culinary business, with roots in China, and thriving in the UK. We identified three history scripting strategies that create this competitive advantage – embedding, elaborating, and building family history. Embedding family history: The family history is constantly related to the broader history of the times, forging a link between the history of the family and that of society. This embeds the business in the communities of past generations, showing how historical events shaped the family’s fate. For Sweet Mandarin, this creates affinity with communities who experienced or witnessed the same events – immigrants, Chinese, British-born Chinese, and local British. The family show a social background to their business that builds affinity with various communities, attracting customers beyond the conventional Chinese restaurant industry. It opens up the business to customers and families who used to dine at Lily’s restaurant. Elaborating family history: Past events in the family are told in relation to the current entrepreneurs, forging links between past and present. This infuses longevity in the business, highlighting a longer heritage and the contribution of past generations. This longevity is a distinct competitive advantage in an industry characterised by short business life cycles. By presenting the previous generations’ achievements, Helen and Lisa demonstrate working in the culinary business as both their fate and as a talent in their bloodline. They backdate their business and acumen from 2005 to 1950, creating longevity that transcends their own experience. New businesses often face the challenge of legitimacy, and the need to develop ties with customers. Customers are more attracted to businesses with a past, and established businesses often use this family history to build customer trust. Sweet Mandarin benefits from having a heritage perceived as valuable by customers. Building family history: This strategy highlights the influence of the entrepreneurial family, and the achievements of Helen and Lisa, their expertise in the culinary business, their devotion, and their personal stances on the dishes and the restaurant. It signals a continuity while inspiring innovation. There are two tactics here: learning from previous generations – building empathy and legitimacy for the business origins and ethos; and emphasising the achievements of the entrepreneurs – giving the current generation’s take on the business, showing their endorsements, and demonstrating how they will carry on. Building the family history allowed Lisa and Helen to establish their own legitimacy as leaders of the family business. They were able to highlight their expertise and devotion to the business, opening new chapters while creating strong links to the past. The current generation’s experiences distinguish them from previous generations, while ties to the past distinguish them from competitors, building their credibility for current and future endeavours. LESSONS TO BE LEARNED The strategies added to the quality of their products and services to enable superior growth and performance compared to competitors. Sweet Mandarin has been in profit since 2010 (£5,554), increasing steadily year-onyear until 2018 (£129,289). Family businesses should be aware of the role history can play in creating competitive advantages, and specifically how they present that history can give them sustainable advantages. Owners are often torn between tradition and innovation, between the vision of previous generations and a new direction. Our research shows that the use of history provides a practical way to balance both sides. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 19 Alfredo De Massis is a former Director of the Centre for Family Business within Lancaster University Management School. This article is based on Mining the Past: History Scripting Strategies and Competitive Advantage in a Family Business, by Dr Bingbing Ge, of Lancaster University Management School; Professor Alfredo De Massis, of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, IMD and Lancaster University Management School; and Dr Josip Kotlar, of the Politecnico di Milano. It is published in the Financial Times 50-ranked journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. b.ge1@lancaster.ac.uk; a.demassis@lancaster.ac.uk Dr Bingbing Ge is a Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, whose research is focused on family business management, entrepreneurship, and strategy.
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CREATINGA FEMALESPACEINAN ANTIFEMINISTREALM The internet imageboard 4chan has a reputation for being home tomisogynistic rhetoric, populated bymen venting rage at women. And yet, there are a significant number of posterswho are female – or who present themselves as such. Dr JudithFathallah investigates how users can successfully adopt female identities and become part of the 4chan community. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21
4chan does not make the news for positive reasons. An internet imageboard founded in 2003, it was initially devoted to discussing anime, but expanded to include discussion boards for everything from politics to fitness to webcamming. Not everyone will have come across 4chan, and you may not have a reason to, yet it has a cultural presence far beyond its original purpose. Today, it is often seen as a hub of fascism, white supremacy and violent misogyny. In the popular press, it is associated with ’incels’ (involuntarily celibate men), who use the site to rage at women who have rejected them. In the USA, several spree killers with a particular agenda against women have actively participated in and subsequently been discussed on 4chan. Chris Harper-Mercer, who killed a professor and eight classmates and injured nine others in a mass shooting in Oregon in 2015, seems to have been a regular contributor to 4chan, including on the morning of the killings. 4chan naturally contained a huge amount of discussion and dissection of the killings after the fact. Elliot Rodger, perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings, who murdered six people and injured 14, is a subject of fascination on 4chan to this day, though he is scorned and derided as much as he is lauded, with particular mockery around his self-description as ‘the supreme gentleman’. Beyond these individuals, 4chan is home to a general form of discourse described as ‘masculinism’, where various discourses associated with masculinity dominate. Misogyny and threats of violence against women are commonplace. Yet that is not the end of the story. In addition to and alongside its dangerous and destructive aspects, 4chan is hugely influential, culturally productive and often hilarious. I have felt horrified at some of the content, but I have laughed as well, it can be funny in unexpected ways – it is the originator of both lolcats and rickrolling. More seriously, it was the birthplace of the Anonymous hacker group, who have carried out cyber-attacks on Russia, Islamic State and the CIA, among others; and as of October 2019, the site received 27.7million unique monthly users. In this antifeminist space, femalepresenting posters – those who refer to themselves as female, regardless of their actual gender – want to and do participate; 4chan estimates 30%of its users are women – though almost all users are anonymous when online. These female-presenting users are not simply passive objects of violence. My research shows they have created various strategies to construct identities and build subcultural capital within an antifeminist webspace, being accepted in a forumwhere those observing from outside might expect them to be rejected or abused. NOT EVERYTHING IS AS IT SEEMS Status plays a meaningful role on 4chan, where users frequently seek to impress fellow users, and cultural capital is one of the few ways posters can distinguish themselves. Neither slurs nor insults can be taken at face value. Slurs do not contain the same prejudice as elsewhere, and insults can be used to turn heads, showing you belong. Misogynistic terms are used in much the same way as other taboo words – usually to expose newbies through normative reactions that show naivety to board culture. The customary response to any opening introducing a poster as female is ‘tits or gtfo’. This functions primarily as a test. Ignoring it gains respect; actually supplying photos produces insults and incredulity that a woman would do such a thing. One femanon shows her knowledge by saying ‘I’ve been on here for 4.5 years [so] tits or gtfo doesn’t work on me’. Another poster affirms that ‘Tits of gtfo applies to women who come on here and needlessly tell us they are women… .. No-one care if women come on here for actual discussion, or say they are women when it’s actually relevant.’ WAYS TOGET BY Studying 4,497 posts containing the keyword ‘femanon’, I found evidence that drawing attention to your female status is derided, but I uncovered four strategies for posters claiming a female identity to get by: 1 A denigration of femininity, assuming a position of subordination and submission to male posters. 2 Degrading male identities, hooking into the popular incel constructs and positing women as social superiors, guiding men to improve themselves, scorning them as worthless, or a combination of all three. 3 Assuming a right-wing identity aligned with other 4chan norms. 4 Empathetic bonding with other posters, beyond, despite or because of gender. Notably, the two longest threads I found related to categories 2 and 4, which shows immediately that the construction of womanhood on 4chan is more complex than ‘incels degrade women’. Denigrating femininity: Posters calling themselves femanon buy into the degradation of women, either positioning themselves as the exception, or assuming the strategic pose of submission to male users. ‘I knowmy place and let men do men’s work,’ says one poster. ‘I keep my man satisfied and he pays the bills and buys me nice things. That’s how it should be.’ Other posters will accuse these femanons of seeking attention and upbraid other male posters who grant it to them – and, indeed, this was the least popular of the four techniques I found. Denigrating men: This was far more common. Some threads opened with deliberate provocation – ‘We do pretty much run the show,’ or ‘Any other femanon here hate incels? They’re all like “omg I can’t get laid”. You can’t get laid because you ugly and deserve the hate’. Here, femanon posters position themselves as men’s social superiors. Male posters will often join in this denigration, admitting they are ‘boring’, and granting femanons higher status. There was even a tendency for malepresenting posters to criticise each other for insulting women too crudely. Assuming a right-wing identity: Femanons present themselves as ‘redpilled’ – holding extremist right political views, usually highly nationalist, often white supremacist, antifeminist, pro-Trump and ultraconservative. Posters bond over their racism, their perceptions of vast conspiracy theories on behalf of the elites. By utilising these forms of discourse, femanons present 22 |
themselves and are accepted as one of the ‘people’ who are battling against that elite. Empathetic bonding: Many of these threads focused on posited social insufficiency and life failures of all 4chan users, be they anon or femanon. Ordinarily, describing yourself as pathetic or a failure would lower your social position, but as failing within wider, mainstream, society is the normal construct of a 4chan user, it actually operates here to gather subcultural capital and formsocial bonds. Other users create bonds despite their gender – using 4chan’s offence discourse to turn gendered insults back on the poster who used them, and gains respect for doing so and showing knowledge of the way the site works. GETTING BY THROUGH FITTING IN Certainly, 4chan is home to a disturbing amount of hate speech, including extreme expressions of racism and misogyny, some of which may even amount to incitement to violence. It can be a dangerous place, one not to be visited lightly – albeit its influence is felt beyond the bounds of its own pages and reaches the cultural zeitgeist. But despite its reputation as a femalehostile space, posters assuming a female identity have used a variety of strategies to claim space for themselves and their concerns. Why would women choose to use 4chan? Through my research I have seen that 4chan offers enough to female users to make the experience of hostility worth it, which is why they employ these strategies to fit in there. Women can hold views that might be seen as reprehensible in the mainstream – they can be anti-feminist, racist – and here they are able to discuss issues that are important to them, to carve out their own spaces, and to bond with fellow femanon and anon users. It is patronising and naïve to say these users just hate themselves – they have all kinds of reasons to be there, as uncomfortable as it might be to consider them. Dr Judith Fathallah is an Outreach and Research Associate in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology. The paper ‘Getting by’ on 4chan: Feminine self-presentation and capital-claiming in antifeminist webspace, by Dr Judith Fathallah, is published in the journal First Monday. j.fathallah@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 23
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FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25 Drivento International Expansion There has been a rise in international expansion by firms based in Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of his doctoral research in Lancaster University Management School, Dr DavidOludotun Fasanya interviewed senior executives to explore why these firms are exploring new horizons. He discovered that assumptions based on evidence from other, more-often studied regions cannot always be applied to different cultures and economies.
When we look at business patterns and practices around the globe, it is standard to build theories on generalised foundations. For a long time, rules and patterns identified in the industrialised nations of Europe, North America, South-East Asia and beyond have been applied wholesale to the rest of the world, including Africa. Sowhat happens in the UK is used to anticipate what occurs in Denmark and, possibly, Nigeria; practices in Canada are equally applied to France and, potentially, South Africa; if it is good enough for Singapore, it is good enough for China and, maybe, Kenya. Even when studies are undertaken and trends are identified in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa – a vast geographical expanse stretching in parts fromCape Town to Lagos, Dakar toMogadishu – they are often based on secondary data, as it is hard to obtain primary information first-hand from the businesses and actors involved. Sub-Saharan Africa is an increasingly attractive location for export-oriented productive activities. Growth and rising incomes in emerging and developing economies have created substantial market opportunities for established multinationals from leading industrialised economies. But these economies are also nurturing homegrown global challengers, with their own competitive advantages, and our study looked at the increasing prevalence of internationalisation among homegrown firms in this region. Most of the existing understanding of this internationalisation phenomenon was built upon surmise and interpretation rather than the testimony of key actors. Much of the research on this topic is also dominated by firms fromSouth Africa – a country withmore similarities to industrialised nations than others in the region – preventing a deeper understanding of overall push and pull factor trends. This is where we came in. FIRST-HAND INVESTIGATION Inmy strategy advisory and consultancy work, I deal a lot withmultinational companies, including those fromSubSaharan Africa. This provided us with valuable access to senior stakeholders in large firms, who have provided information and data directly. Over time, we have built significant relationships and gained the trust of these key people, so that they feel confident and comfortable enough to speak with us and relate their business experiences and knowledge. Our research is therefore distinct in being one of the first to collect detailed primary data on internationalisation from five firms across three sectors and three key countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. One is a long-established South African consumer goods company, two are from the Nigerian financial services sector, and the final two are in the telecommunications sector, one from Nigeria, the other fromKenya. Many of the home-grown firms in the region have previous experience of operating in environments characterised by institutional voids – inefficiencies in governance or the absence of institutions in the home or host country –which reduces their ‘liability of foreignness’. But what factors push or pull themto expand internationally? PUSH AND PULL When we look at why firms expand into new countries, wemust consider both push and pull factors. Pull factors are determined by potential profit-making opportunities beyond a company’s national borders for those willing to take the risk. Push factors – or escape responses – result fromamisalignment between home country conditions and the needs of the firm. They are usually firm- or sector-specific. 26 | Nairobi, Kenya
PUSH FACTORS When we studied push factors, the information did not reveal insights that were particularly unique to the region. Rather, we found issues that are also reflective of other global locations and existing patterns but that are validated by primary data from Sub-Saharan Africa. All of the firmswe spoke to saw internationalisation as an essential element in their strategic vision for future growth; each highlighted their firmspecific advantages, such as their strong manufacturing and branding capabilities, assetmanagement expertise and industry knowledge. All face intense competition in stagnant homemarkets, withweak demand, market saturation and issues around regulation and competition policieswhichwere pushing themto expand elsewhere. Internationalisation is seen as ameans to reduce firm risk and revenue volatility; two of the firms used it as a way to sidestep stringent domestic financial regulation, and another as a way to reduce the impact of domestic political uncertainty. The case-study firms have accumulated important operational capabilities that they can transfer to other markets in the region. Some saw it as essential for operating in the region’s challenging institutional andmarket conditions, others used it to develop their own inhouse capabilities. This is an advantage firms fromoutside the region lack. There is a strong degree of similarity across the five firms in spite of their different sectors and home countries, suggesting that those factors play little part in internationalisation. PULL FACTORS It is when we come to the pull factors that we found important differences, as two new non-standard factors come into play – network links and diaspora demand. These are in addition to expected factors of host countrymarket growth, the acquisition of strategic assets and seeking efficiency. These new factorsmay reflect the distinct regional and/or developmental characteristics of Sub-Saharan Africa or may bemore widespread. The pull factors in Africamight be expected to differ fromother regions. Many national borders are artificial legacies of colonialism, and some countries share common cultural, linguistic and legal heritages. Distinct sub-regions (such asWest Africa) exist because of poor infrastructural links whichmake land-based interaction difficult. Therefore, similar sub-regional marketsmay attract more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as the liability of foreignness is relatively weak, reducing the cost of attainingmarket share and profitability. The role of diaspora demand is at least partly inter-related with firms’ presence in specific sub-regions, given crossborder cultural similarities andmigration patterns. Both Nigerian firms we examined cited its expatriate nationals as a separate pull factor. Thesemigrants offer a ready-made host country clientele, reducing the risk of foreignness. The Nigerian financial services firmspecifically targeted markets with a large Nigerian diaspora, while the telecoms firm focused on the onemillion Nigerians in Ghana because of their prior familiarity with its services. Network links with business partners, governments, suppliers and consumers are also seen as important – through corporate, ethnic and cultural linkages – as they reduce firms’ liability of foreignness inmultiple dimensions. This includes reputation building, collaboratingwith business partners, maintaining client relationships, securing strategic distribution channels and aiding market entry. Sustaining personal client and cultural networks within theNigerian diasporawere important to both companies fromthat country. Both these new factors reduce the firms’ liability of foreignness, the former through personal and business relationships, and the latter by providing a low-riskmeans to attain amarket share. They create ready-mademarkets at low cost in host countries. NEWHORIZONS Our work has shown the importance of gaining first-hand insight into business practice in emerging regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, rather thanmaking assumptions or generalisations based upon unreliable and subjective secondary sources. By building relationships and talking directly to businesses on the ground, we have been able to provide evidence to support some widely-held theories but also to extend others, to say ‘with regards to Africa, these additional factorsmay apply’. The pull factor findings around diaspora effects and networks need to be reflected upon in research and in practice, and the data we have collected sets the bar for further research in the region. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 27 All of the firms that we spoke to saw internationalisation as an essential element in their strategic vision for future growth... ‘‘ ’’ Dr David Oludotun Fasanya completed a part-time PhD in Management (International Business) with Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) in 2018. He runs his own strategy advisory and consulting business, The Junglepreneur Group. The paper, Determinants of internationalisation by firms from Sub-Saharan Africa, published in the Journal of Business Research, is co-authored by, Dr David Oludotun Fasanya, Dr Hilary Ingham and Dr Robert Read.
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