State-owned enterprises (SOEs) contribute approximately 10% of the world's GDP. SOEs at one time were predicted to disappear from the economic landscape of the world, but today SOEs are growing more prevalent in the world economy. The current theories of the firm that form the pillars of the management discipline largely ignore the theoretical differences that SOEs introduce into the conceptualization of the firm. Therefore, we extend four core theories of the firm by incorporating SOEs as a mainstream (not special or marginal) organizational form into these theories. We focus specifically on property rights theory, transaction cost theory, agency theory, and resource-based theory, culminating in a research agenda with 12 testable propositions.

No abstract

43Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas (GHG) and also an ozone-depleting

Water table drawdown across peatlands increases carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and reduces methane (CH 4 ) emissions. The net climatic effect remains unclear. Based on observations from 130 sites around the globe, we found a positive (warming) net climate effect of water table drawdown.Using a machine-learning based upscaling approach, we predict that peatland water table drawdown driven by climate drying and human activities will increase CO 2 emissions by 1.13 (95% interval: 0.88 -1.50 ) Gt yr -1 and reduce CH 4 by 0.26 (0.14 -0.52) Gt CO 2 -eq yr -1 , resulting in a net increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) of 0.86 (0.36 -1.36) Gt CO 2 -eq yr -1 by the end of the 21 st century under the RCP8.5 climate scenario. This net source drops to 0.73 (0.2 -1.2) Gt CO 2 -eq yr -1 under RCP2.6. Our results point to an urgent need to preserve pristine and rehabilitate drained peatlands to decelerate the positive (more warming) feedback among water table drawdown, increased GHG emissions and climate warming.

Abstract. In support of the global stocktake of the Paris Agreement on climate change, this study presents a comprehensive framework to process the results of an ensemble of atmospheric inversions in order to make their net ecosystem exchange (NEE) carbon dioxide (CO2) flux suitable for evaluating national greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) submitted by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). From inversions we also deduced anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions regrouped into fossil and agriculture and waste emissions, as well as anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. To compare inversion results with national reports, we compiled a new global harmonized database of emissions and removals from periodical UNFCCC inventories by Annex I countries, and from sporadic and less detailed emissions reports by non-Annex I countries, given by national communications and biennial update reports. No gap filling was applied. The method to reconcile inversions with inventories is applied to selected large countries covering ∼90 % of the global land carbon uptake for CO2 and top emitters of CH4 and N2O. Our method uses results from an ensemble of global inversions produced by the Global Carbon Project for the three greenhouse gases, with ancillary data. We examine the role of CO2 fluxes caused by lateral transfer processes from rivers and from trade in crop and wood products and the role of carbon uptake in unmanaged lands, both not accounted for by NGHGIs. Here we show that, despite a large spread across the inversions, the median of available inversion models points to a larger terrestrial carbon sink than inventories over temperate countries or groups of countries of the Northern Hemisphere like Russia, Canada and the European Union. For CH4, we find good consistency between the inversions assimilating only data from the global in situ network and those using satellite CH4 retrievals and a tendency for inversions to diagnose higher CH4 emission estimates than reported by NGHGIs. In particular, oil- and gas-extracting countries in central Asia and the Persian Gulf region tend to systematically report lower emissions compared to those estimated by inversions. For N2O, inversions tend to produce higher anthropogenic emissions than inventories for tropical countries, even when attempting to consider only managed land emissions. In the inventories of many non-Annex I countries, this can be tentatively attributed to a lack of reporting indirect N2O emissions from atmospheric deposition and from leaching to rivers, to the existence of natural sources intertwined with managed lands, or to an underestimation of N2O emission factors for direct agricultural soil emissions. Inversions provide insights into seasonal and interannual greenhouse gas fluxes anomalies, e.g., during extreme events such as drought or abnormal fire episodes, whereas inventory methods are established to estimate trends and multi-annual changes. As a much denser sampling of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations by different satellites coordinated into a global constellation is expected in the coming years, the methodology proposed here to compare inversion results with inventory reports (e.g., NGHGIs) could be applied regularly for monitoring the effectiveness of mitigation policy and progress by countries to meet the objective of their pledges. The dataset constructed by this study is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5089799 (Deng et al., 2021).

In summer 2018, Europe experienced a record drought, but it remains unknown how the drought affected ecosystem carbon dynamics. Using observations from 34 eddy covariance sites in different biomes across Europe, we studied the sensitivity of gross primary productivity (GPP) to environmental drivers during the summer drought of 2018 versus the reference summer of 2016. We found a greater drought-induced decline of summer GPP in grasslands (−38%) than in forests (−10%), which coincided with reduced evapotranspiration and soil water content (SWC). As compared to the ‘normal year’ of 2016, GPP in different ecosystems exhibited more negative sensitivity to summer air temperature (Ta) but stronger positive sensitivity to SWC during summer drought in 2018, that is, a stronger reduction of GPP with soil moisture deficit. We found larger negative effects of Ta and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) but a lower positive effect of photosynthetic photon flux density on GPP in 2018 compared to 2016, which contributed to reduced summer GPP in 2018. Our results demonstrate that high temperature-induced increases in VPD and decreases in SWC aggravated drought impacts on GPP. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Impacts of the 2018 severe drought and heatwave in Europe: from site to continental scale’.

The terrestrial carbon (C) cycle has been commonly represented by a series of C balance equations to track C influxes into and effluxes out of individual pools in earth system models (ESMs). This representation matches our understanding of C cycle processes well but makes it difficult to track model behaviors. It is also computationally expensive, limiting the ability to conduct comprehensive parametric sensitivity analyses. To overcome these challenges, we have developed a matrix approach, which reorganizes the C balance equations in the original ESM into one matrix equation without changing any modeled C cycle processes and mechanisms. We applied the matrix approach to the Community Land Model (CLM4.5) with vertically-resolved biogeochemistry. The matrix equation exactly reproduces litter and soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics of the standard CLM4.5 across different spatial-temporal scales. The matrix approach enables effective diagnosis of system properties such as C residence time and attribution of global change impacts to relevant processes. We illustrated, for example, the impacts of CO fertilization on litter and SOC dynamics can be easily decomposed into the relative contributions from C input, allocation of external C into different C pools, nitrogen regulation, altered soil environmental conditions, and vertical mixing along the soil profile. In addition, the matrix tool can accelerate model spin-up, permit thorough parametric sensitivity tests, enable pool-based data assimilation, and facilitate tracking and benchmarking of model behaviors. Overall, the matrix approach can make a broad range of future modeling activities more efficient and effective.

Abstract. Global terrestrial nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles are coupled to the global carbon (C) cycle for net primary production (NPP), plant C allocation, and decomposition of soil organic matter, but N and P have distinct pathways of inputs and losses. Current C-nutrient models exhibit large uncertainties in their estimates of pool sizes, fluxes, and turnover rates of nutrients, due to a lack of consistent global data for evaluating the models. In this study, we present a new model–data fusion framework called the Global Observation-based Land-ecosystems Utilization Model of Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphorus (GOLUM-CNP) that combines the CARbon DAta MOdel fraMework (CARDAMOM) data-constrained C-cycle analysis with spatially explicit data-driven estimates of N and P inputs and losses and with observed stoichiometric ratios. We calculated the steady-state N- and P-pool sizes and fluxes globally for large biomes. Our study showed that new N inputs from biological fixation and deposition supplied >20 % of total plant uptake in most forest ecosystems but accounted for smaller fractions in boreal forests and grasslands. New P inputs from atmospheric deposition and rock weathering supplied a much smaller fraction of total plant uptake than new N inputs, indicating the importance of internal P recycling within ecosystems to support plant growth. Nutrient-use efficiency, defined as the ratio of gross primary production (GPP) to plant nutrient uptake, were diagnosed from our model results and compared between biomes. Tropical forests had the lowest N-use efficiency and the highest P-use efficiency of the forest biomes. An analysis of sensitivity and uncertainty indicated that the NPP-allocation fractions to leaves, roots, and wood contributed the most to the uncertainties in the estimates of nutrient-use efficiencies. Correcting for biases in NPP-allocation fractions produced more plausible gradients of N- and P-use efficiencies from tropical to boreal ecosystems and highlighted the critical role of accurate measurements of C allocation for understanding the N and P cycles.