We conduct two experiments to investigate the effects of giving subordinates the possibility to return budget surplus on capital budgeting processes. We predict and find that when subordinates face low uncertainty when submitting their budget request, the possibility to return budget surplus increases budget requests compared to not having this possibility but that this effect is mitigated under high uncertainty. We also predict and find that subordinates return more budget surplus under high than low uncertainty. Together, these results imply that the possibility to return budget surplus can be particularly beneficial for firms operating under high uncertainty. We contribute to the literature by integrating an important feature of budgeting practice into research, i.e., subordinates' possibility to return budget surplus and by showing that the effects of implementing such an option may strongly depend on the level of uncertainty a subordinate faces.

Thinking space and the imagination of island territories is a central theme in the works of authors from the south-western Indian Ocean. But is this symbolic appropriation achieved through the affirmation of specific identities or by staging an exchange, or even a dialogue, between islands which, due to history and its aftermath, share many linguistic, ethno-cultural and socio-political characteristics? This article will discuss this question of inter-island relations and dialogue by examining contemporary novel writing from Mauritius-the most visible and prolific production from the region. I begin by examining a number of poetic and critical texts (on Lemuria, Indian-Oceanism, Coolitude, Indian Ocean creolisation) in which real or hypothetical island connections have long been considered. I then read several novels by Francophone and Anglophone Mauritian authors (e.g. Ananda Devi, Amal Sewtohul, Nathacha Appanah, Lindsey Collen), within the broader context of contemporary island literature, focusing on how they situate and conceive of island geography and imagination in relation to neighbouring island territories. I demonstrate that while dialogical thinking between the islands of the Indian Ocean remains relatively marginal in Mauritian novels, these texts nevertheless contain a subtle and significant presence in this regard.

La pensée de l’espace et de l’imaginaire des territoires insulaires est un enjeu central dans les textes des auteurs du sud-ouest de l’océan Indien. Or cette appropriation symbolique se fait-elle par le biais d’une affirmation d’identités spécifiques ou en mettant en scène un échange, voire un dialogue entre les îles qui, de par l’histoire et de ses séquelles, partagent nombre de caractéristiques sur les plans linguistiques, ethno-culturels et socio-politiques? Sur cette question d’une mise en relation et d’un dialogue interinsulaire, on examinera la création romanesque contemporaine de l’île Maurice—la production la plus visible et plus prolifique de la zone. On interrogera d’abord quelques textes poético-critiques (sur la Lémurie, l’Indianocéanisme, la Coolitude, les créolisations india-océanes) où les liens insulaires réels ou hypothétiques sont pensés depuis longtemps. Puis, on lira plusieurs romans d’auteurs mauriciens d’expression française et anglaise (par exemple Ananda Devi, Amal Sewtohul, Nathacha Appanah, Lindsey Collen), au sein de la production insulaire contemporaine plus largement, sur leur manière de situer et de penser la géographie et l’imaginaire insulaires en rapport aux territoires insulaires voisins. On verra alors que si une pensée dialogique entre les îles de l’océan Indien y reste relativement marginal, le roman mauricien ne manque toutefois pas de présences subtiles et significatives à cet égard.

Following its substantial diversification over the past two decades, graphic literature now occupies numerous symbolic locations within both the artistic field and other areas of representation and social discourse. While notably (auto)biographical, testimonial, and non-fictional graphic storytelling has contributed to the medium's increased legitimization and visibility, it has also become fertile in addressing complex political issues such as war, displacement, and migration. Yet these newly "engaged" productions of a polysemic medium touch on several complex, partly interrelated questions. On the one hand lingers the reduction to the solely illustrative, on the other the suspicion of simplification and superficiality - all of which cannot be easily dismissed when graphic texts become simple pre-texts for other presumably extra-textual matter: identity, politics, society, and so on. However, like in the case of literature, certain forms of fictionalization and aesthetic play may meet with (ethical) reservations for topical issues which seem to rather call for "serious" and "factual" attention. And, of course, discursive and visual expression entertains a multiple relationship, where one may compensate for, double, or strategically contrast the other. Informed by such interrogations about the specificity of the medium and the intricacy of its new "engaged" formats, this essay focuses on the graphic work on migration and displacement of selected contemporary Francophone authors (Edmond Baudoin and Troubs, Yvan Alagbe, Jean-Philippe Stassen) and discusses several ways of representing and reflecting on death of migrants and refugees in these narratives. It will demonstrate that writing about such sensitive problems does not have the same scenographical implications, nor does it trigger the same (empathetic and critical) response as drawing them. This ultimately reveals that the aesthetic and political relevance of these graphic works lies in the medium's characteristic interplay between text and image.

This study investigates, via two experiments, the effects of target transparency, which reflects employees' knowledge about each other's targets in an organization, on managers' target setting decisions. We also investigate whether this effect depends on the need for help among employees. We predict and find that target transparency and need for help interact to influence managers' target setting decisions. Target transparency increases target levels when the need for help is low, but not when it is high. Further, target transparency leads managers to differentiate less between individual employee targets. This reduction is greater when the need for help is high than when it is low. Additional analyses support our theory by revealing that managers strategically set targets in a way that is consistent with an intention to motivate both effort at the individual level and help among employees when such are needed. Our results help explain anecdotal evidence of why companies that value help among employees often make targets transparent throughout the entire organization.

ABSTRACTThis study investigates when and why intrayear bonus target revisions occur. This is important as intrayear target revisions occur regularly in practice but are not well understood. Specifically, we analyze two potential drivers of intrayear bonus target revisions: reduced managerial incentives owing to managers dropping out of the incentive zone of their piecewise defined bonus function and potential spillovers from planning target revisions that reflect changes in performance expectations during the year. We also investigate the effects of organizational characteristics on intrayear bonus target revisions. Using data collected from sales executives via multiple waves of surveys, we find evidence for both predicted drivers. In addition, consistent with our predictions, we find that the levels of delegated decision authority, intrafirm interdependencies, and information asymmetry negatively moderate the positive association between reduced managerial incentives and revision likelihood. Our paper contributes to the target setting literature by being the first study to investigate intrayear bonus target revisions and shed light on when firms commit to not revising such targets intrayear.

KAMENOFF (Lydia), DE VILLAINE (Hortense), dir., L'Empire : centre et périphéries. Paris : L'Harmattan, coll. Questions contemporaines, 2022, 209 p. – ISBN 978-2-343-24788-5. Un article de la revue Études littéraires africaines (Futurs africains : utopies et dystopies) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

This paper conducts four experiments to investigate whether and to which extent high vs. moderate target difficulty can attenuate asymmetric target ratcheting, i.e., the phenomenon that targets are often adjusted more strongly upwards after being exceeded than adjusted downwards after being missed. The first two experiments, with different populations, (1) replicate prior findings of asymmetric targets ratcheting under moderate prior target difficulty, (2) predict and find that under high prior target difficulty, asymmetric ratcheting is mitigated and that this mitigating effect of high prior target difficulty is stronger when managers perceive low rather than high information asymmetry between them and their employees regarding the market environment. Experiment 3 provides evidence about managers’ biased view on how permanent and transitory factors explain prior target variances. Experiment 4 manipulates, instead of measures, information asymmetry and again finds that information asymmetry moderates the effect of high prior target difficulty on asymmetric adjustments.

This article examines the work of Malagasy writer Raharimanana in the light of the Afrotopian thinking developed by Senegalese scholar Felwine Sarr. While Raharimananas' writing is characterised by its emphasis on memory, and while his original imagination invests both Malagasy particularities and extra-insular references, his recent literary creation bears particular witness to critical resonances with the "visions of the possible" elaborated in the book Afrotopia (2016) and in related recent conceptualisations around the idea of African futures. I will discuss Tisser (2021) ['Weaving'], a hybrid text at the crossroads of fabulation, poetry and political discourse, in which Raharimanana uses legends, Malagasy founding myths and contemporary realities to intertwine decolonial criticism with utopian reflection. I argue that the books' significant critical and poetic potential lies in the authors' singular reinvestment of the Malagasy cultural and historical universe to which other post-colonial and notably African locations and issues are tied in a gesture of solidarity and dialogue. However, certain thematic and stylistic aspects of Tisser can already be found in two of Raharimananas' previous texts published in the collective volumes Pour une litterature-monde (2007) ['In favour of Word Literature'] andPolitique des Temps (2019) [The Politics of Time]. These short texts will be analysed ahead of Tisser, as prefigurations of his more recent writing and important stages in a critical genealogy that participates in consolidating the subversive and visionary positions of his work from 2021. Enriched by productive echoes of Afrotopian thought, the emancipatory rhetoric woven by Raharimananas' relational imagination thus appears to be an innovative, both political and poetic contribution to figuring and rethinking the human from and for the Global South, Madagascar and Africa.

Employees' skill development is key to organizations' competitiveness in a global, knowledge-based economy. Prior research in accounting, however, has mainly focused on motivating the provision of transitory effort. This study investigates how relative performance information (RPI) as a management control influences employees' willingness to engage in skill development and whether the effect of RPI depends on whether employees face a tradeoff between training and current work performance. We predict and find that RPI increases the likelihood of taking training when a work-training tradeoff is absent but decreases it when a work-training tradeoff is present. We also predict and find RPI increases employee performance when a work-training tradeoff is absent and the effect is less positive (and directionally negative) when a work-training tradeoff is present. Our paper is an important first step in investigating how management controls interfere with employees' investment in skill development and its tradeoff with transitory effort provision.

ABSTRACT We investigate how performance-to-target (exceeding versus missing prior target) and task type (ability-driven versus effort-driven) affect managers' target-setting decisions in a setting where a manager sets targets for multiple employees. To do so, we use an experiment that involves executives, who average more than 16 years of work experience. We predict and find stronger target adjustments when prior targets are exceeded than when they are missed, especially when tasks are ability-driven. We also predict and find targets are differentiated more between employees within a firm when tasks are ability-driven rather than effort-driven, but this effect is attenuated when prior targets are missed. As prior empirical findings are inconclusive in this area of research, we contribute to the literature by providing controlled experimental evidence about the asymmetric nature of target adjustments. Additionally, we identify an important factor affecting managers' target-setting decisions—task type—that has largely been neglected in prior work. JEL Classifications: M21; M41; M52.

Jackson (Jeanne-Marie), The African Novel of Ideas : Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing. Princeton ; Oxford : Princeton University Press, 2021, xi-223 p. – ISBN 978-0-691-18644-3. An article from journal Études littéraires africaines (Approches pluridisciplinaires et postcoloniales de la traduction en Afrique), on Érudit.

Using an experiment, we investigate whether job candidates’ noncontractible effort promises increase their actual effort in the work relationship when the labor market is competitive. Due to promise-keeping preferences, individuals tend to keep promises even if doing so is costly. However, when promises can be made strategically to influence hiring decisions, it is unclear whether workers are less likely to keep their promises. We develop theory to predict that making effort promises matters even more when labor markets are competitive. We find workers promise higher effort levels when competing for a job than when they do not, but do not keep promises to a lesser extent although the costs of promise-keeping increase with the promise size, thereby increasing the total effort provided. The results enhance our understanding of the effects of worker-employer communication during hiring, particularly in a competitive setting in which such communication is most likely to occur.

Far from the world, the island is the world: The island ecotones of the Indian Ocean between creolisation and liquid borders. Due to their specific geography and plural histories, the island societies of the south-western Indian Ocean are characterised by a considerable anthropological and cultural complexity. Colonial regimes and migratory and diasporic phenomena have strongly marked these territories on the oceanic borders as well as their social construction and particular ethno-racial composition. Island-as-utopia, island-as-prison, island-as-refuge, island-as-stopover, island-as-relation, island-as-world … there is no shortage of notions to imagine and describe these heterogeneous places where the realities, potentialities, and limits of (post)colonial cultural plurality are negotiated. For behind the tropical dreams and the exaltations of harmonious cohabitation (vivre-ensemble) appear the precariousness of the island condition, the ambiguity of identity, and the difficulty of anchoring oneself in and expressing oneself from a place which continues to be significantly shaped by its relations with the outside (the old and new ‘metropolises’ and places of reference, other islands). To what extent can the specificities of the Indian Ocean islands – this other ‘archipelago’ less visible than its Caribbean counterpart – inform and nourish continental territories, France, the world? Are they models of ethical solidarity? Antidotes to identity-based blockages? Laboratories of democratic thought? Creative prefigurations of the future? It may well be. However, according to certain thinkers, writers and artists from these spaces, the islands and archipelagos – far from being the idealisations of a vitalist and blissful community (en-commun) – prove to be above all plural and conflicting contact zones. They emerge as complex ecotones that allow us to imagine and think about the challenges of our contemporary societies and cultures from the ‘margins’, the interstices, the unstable borders.

Review of: The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging, Julia Waters (2018) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 236 pp., ISBN 978-1-78694-149-7, h/bk, £25