Reflections on grounding firm innovation and viability

Entrepreneurial activity unfolds in a dynamic environment that challenges business viability. We utilize grounded theory as a novel type of reflection to explain and interpret whether and how innovation can afford survival benefits to firms. The premise is the application of a methodological approach with reflexive properties to advance scientific rigor in “reflections.” The idea underlying our reflection was to use innovation as the point of departure, review the literature, conceptualize ideas, and finally link the concepts that emerged as components of a framework. Our view of the firm resembles a viable entity that changes, constantly striving to meet and balance internal potentials and external complexities, while innovation per se involves change that is made possible by entrepreneurship. We bring together our personal and professional backgrounds and implement the European scholarly tradition on innovation and Viable Systems approach to scrutinize innovation’s interactions and relations. We linked boundary conditions, opportunities, and complementary assets to innovation. Effectively, our analysis conceptualizes innovation as autopoiesis in entrepreneurship and demonstrates its central role as the vehicle to exploit changes that ensure firm viability.     

Travail et normes comptables internationales: une question de justice sociale

En tant que garante internationale de la justice sociale, l'OIT se trouve confrontée à une révolution comptable mondiale, parachevée par les normes comptables internationales (IAS-IFRS). La comptabilité mesurait autrefois l'économie en rapport avec les capacités et les responsabilités des travailleurs et de ceux qui en disposent. C'est aujourd'hui l'exact opposé: les normes IAS-IFRS ont perdu le sens de la mesure du travail et de l'entreprise en se référant au concept abstrait d'une entité cybernétique capable d'incessantes réorganisations, au prix d'inégalités sans limites. L'auteur en dénonce les incohérences et démontre la nécessité de redonner au travail toute sa valeur comptable.     

Public sector managers: the decision to leave or remain in a job

The public sector faces a grave problem as far as managerial retention as the result of the increasing number of retirements and of voluntary resignations. Despite the vital interest in managerial turnover in the public sector, research is scarce. This study, which increases our understanding of why public sector managers leave their positions, takes a qualitative and narrative research approach in examining voluntary turnover. Interviews were conducted with operations managers (in education, social care, and technical activities) at three Swedish municipalities. We identify a multitude of environment push and pull factors with a focus on administrative support, supervisory support and illegitimate tasks. The narratives of managerial turnover reveal the complexity of the decision to leave or remain in a job, containing a mixture of push and pull factors, negative feelings, unmet expectations and extraordinary events. Three possible HRD actions to decrease undesirable managerial turnover are identified: re-work organizational structures; re-model job characteristics; and re-examine managerial turnover decisions as a long and complex process. Our hope is that the findings are used for ultimately create healthy organizations.     

Finding the vulnerable among China’s elderly: identifying measures for effective policy targeting

Facing a rapidly aging population, China has recently started to formulate and implement policies with the aim to provide old-age care. While well-developed old-age care policies commonly include a built-in component that assesses eligibility based on vulnerability, no such process is established in the context of China. Here, based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study collected in both 2011 and 2013, we (a) developed a simple and effective strategy for identifying vulnerable Chinese elderly, which can serve as a basis for policy targeting, and (b) improved the policy relevance and targeting efficiency of this vulnerability measure by including additional health indicators. Our vulnerability measures identify 35% to 46% of Chinese elderly as vulnerable, covering up to 67% of elderly at high risk of death or functional decline. They can serve as an initial screening step for more comprehensive geriatric assessments and enable policy makers to effectively target vulnerable elderly persons in China.     

Heterogeneity in treatment effects across diverse populations

Differences in patient characteristics, including age, sex, and race influence the safety and effectiveness of drugs, biologic products, and medical devices. Here we provide a summary of the topics discussed during the opening panel at the 2018 Johns Hopkins Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation symposium on Assessing and Communicating Heterogeneity of Treatment Effects for Patient Subpopulations: Challenges and Opportunities. The goal of this session was to provide a brief overview of FDA-regulated therapeutics, including drugs, biologics and medical devices, and some of the major sources of heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTE) related to patient demographics, such as age, sex and race. The panel discussed the US Food and Drug Administration's role in reviewing and regulating drugs, devices, and biologic products and the challenges associated with ensuring that diverse patient populations benefit from these therapeutics. Ultimately, ensuring diverse demographic inclusion in clinical trials, and designing basic and clinical research studies to account for the intended patient population's age, sex, race, and genetic factors among other characteristics, will lead to better, safer therapies for diverse patient populations.     

Population aging and long-term care policies in the Gulf region: a case study of Oman

Population aging is a phenomenon occurring across the globe including in countries traditionally exhibiting population dividends and “youth bulges.” The Gulf Corporation Council countries are no exception as they currently experience a process of population aging, albeit at a different stage from many developed countries. However, due to historically high fertility rates and fast-paced epidemiological transition, some of these countries will experience population aging at a higher pace than what has been observed in Europe and the United States. This article reviews recent developments in long-term care policies in the Gulf region with a focus on Oman as an example of a high-income Arab country that is experiencing population aging while still being governed by traditional family aged-care norms. Utilizing existing data and published research complemented by policy analysis and field visits, we analyze the process of population aging in Oman and neighboring countries and its policy implications.     

农村互助型社会养老:中国特色与发展路径

农村互助型社会养老是具有中国特色的社会养老的发展形式，是对农村传统家庭养老的重要补充。它扎根于农村传统的亲邻互助网络，其本质在于经济互助，表现为有组织地发动邻里、志愿等社会力量，充分利用以老年人为主的各类人力资源的闲置时间、资源低成本地相互帮助和服务。社会各界应将其作为重要实施方略，纳入积极应对人口老龄化战略和乡村振兴战略之中。其发展路径可以概括为：以资金互助为基础，以组织动员为抓手，以服务互助为重点，以社区居家养老为主要阵地，创新各类互助养老模式，着力形成稳定多元的资金来源，培育互助队伍，增加互助内容，从无偿到无偿、低偿相结合，探索建立标准规范的服务管理评估制度，机构养老与社区居家养老互联互通，最终尝试建立圈层化、整合化、网络化、制度化的农村互助型社会养老体系。     

Assessing respondent-driven sampling: A simulation study across different networks

The purpose was to assess RDS estimators in populations simulated with diverse connectivity characteristics, incorporating the putative influence of misreported degrees and transmission processes. Four populations were simulated using different random graph models. Each population was “infected” using four different transmission processes. From each combination of population x transmission, one thousand samples were obtained using a RDS-like sampling strategy. Three estimators were used to predict the population-level prevalence of the “infection”. Several types of misreported degrees were simulated. Also, samples were generated using the standard random sampling method and the respective prevalence estimates, using the classical frequentist estimator. Estimation biases in relation to population parameters were assessed, as well as the variance. Variability was associated with the connectivity characteristics of each simulated population. Clustered populations yield greater variability and no RDS-based strategy could address the estimation biases. Misreporting degrees had modest effects, especially when RDS estimators were used. The best results for RDS-based samples were observed when the “infection” was randomly attributed, without any relation with the underlying network structure.     

Cognitive abilities,self-efficacy,and financial behavior

This paper investigates the effect of cognitive abilities on financial behavior among older adults. Using the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, I find that cognitive abilities significantly affect financial behavior through two channels: ability and self-efficacy. People with higher cognition scores achieve better financial outcomes. This positive association is especially strong in tasks having high demand of cognitive abilities, which confirms the ability channel of the cognitive ability effect. In addition, there is evidence for the self-efficacy channel as a secondary source of cognitive influence. Lower cognitive abilities decrease people’s sense of self-efficacy, which, in turn, significantly decreases financial management efficiency. The findings have important policy implications, specifically that more effort is needed to assist the growing older population through the cognitive aging process and that noncognitive skills, as a secondary source of influence, also warrant attention.     

Elementary renewal theorems for widely dependent random variables with applications to precise large deviations

Abstract

On the basis of Wang and Cheng (J. Math. Anal. Appl. 384 (2011) 597–606), this paper further investigates elementary renewal theorems for counting processes generated by random walks with widely orthant dependent increments. The obtained results improve the corresponding ones of the above-mentioned paper mainly in the sense of weakening the moment conditions on the positive parts of the increments. Meanwhile, a revised version of strong law of large numbers for random walks with widely orthant dependent increments is established, which improves Theorem 1.4 of Wang and Cheng (2011 Wang, Y., and D. Cheng. 2011. Basic renewal theorems for a random walk with widely dependent increments and their applications. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 384 (2):597–606. doi:10.1016/j.jmaa.2011.06.010.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by enlarging the regions of dominating coefficients. Finally, by using the above results, some precise large deviation results for a nonstandard renewal risk model are established, in which the innovations are widely orthant dependent random variables with common heavy tails, and the inter-arrival times are also widely orthant dependent.