Muddiman E., Power S., Taylor C. Civil Society and the Family. Policy Press,Bristol, 2020, pp. 203, References,Index, £60.00. ISBN 978-1-4473-5552-6

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

A framework for the analysis of self-confirming policies

Theory and Decision - This paper provides a general framework for analyzing self-confirming policies. We study self-confirming equilibria in recurrent decision problems with incomplete information...     

The Welfare State as Safety Net in Migration Preferences: Empirical Evidence from an Experiment Among Dutch Master Students

Population Research and Policy Review - The welfare state can be perceived as a safety net which helps individuals adjust to situations of risk or transition. Starting from this idea of the welfare...     

Dynamic capabilities and high-tech entrepreneurial ventures’ performance in the aftermath of an environmental jolt

This paper contributes to studies on dynamic capabilities (DCs) by showing that a neglected environmental contingency – i.e. the occurrence of a jolt – shapes the DCs–performance relationship. We focus on high-tech entrepreneurial ventures because these are the firms that jolts affect most; in so doing, we also advance the understanding of DCs in the entrepreneurship field. We argue that, in the aftermath of an environmental jolt, the high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that use internationalization and new product development capabilities to modify their resource configuration and regain environmental fit enjoy better performance. Econometric estimates on a sample of 340 Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures confronting the consequences of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 confirm that separately using these two DCs has a positive performance effect. This effect is stronger for relatively smaller ventures. Interestingly, despite synergies should arise from the combined use of the two DCs, we do not detect any superadditive effects.     

Consolidation and fragmentation in environmental scanning: A review and research agenda

Environmental scanning is a broadly defined concept, having first received attention from scholars in the late 1960s. Over the years a number of similar and overlapping constructs have emerged in management literature. The aim of this study, via a systematic review and thematic analysis of relevant empirical research, is to consolidate foundation environmental scanning knowledge, demonstrate how scanning research has developed and fragmented over time, and propose an agenda for future research. The first contribution of our review is a new typology of environmental scanning research made up of five discrete research views, which provides a more comprehensive and contemporary overview of the field than previous studies. The second is a proposed agenda for future research that explicitly acknowledges the role of technology, an area that is presently underdeveloped in foundation scanning literature. The third contribution is to signpost future directions for research on scanning and organisational performance using a number of theoretical perspectives. The overall outcome of our review is to move scanning research on from increasingly incremental contributions concerned with context to a place where the changing role of technology and the mechanisms through which environmental scanning contributes to competitive advantage can be more thoroughly understood.     

The Need to Reconcile Concepts that Characterize Systems Facing Threats

Desirable system performance in the face of threats has been characterized by various management concepts. Through semistructured interviews with editors of journals in the fields of emergency response and systems management, a literature review, and professional judgment, we identified nine related and often interchangeably used system performance concepts: adaptability, agility, reliability, resilience, resistance, robustness, safety, security, and sustainability. A better understanding of these concepts will allow system planners to pursue management strategies best suited to their unique system dynamics and specific objectives of good performance. We analyze expert responses and review the linguistic definitions and mathematical framing of these concepts to understand their applications. We find a lack of consensus on their usage between interview subjects, but by using the mathematical framing to enrich the linguistic definitions, we formulate comparative visualizations and propose distinct definitions for the nine concepts. We present a conceptual framing to relate the concepts for management purposes.     

Debiasing or regularisation? Two interpretations of the concept of ‘true preference’ in behavioural economics

Theory and Decision - I reconsider Bleichrodt, Pinto Prades and Wakker’s (BPW) 2001 paper about eliciting utility measures from stated preference surveys. That paper pioneers a method that is...     

Below the Tip of the Iceberg: Examining Early Childhood Participation in SNAP and TANF from Birth to Age Six

Population Research and Policy Review - In the United States, the SNAP and TANF programs provide financial support to low-income households with children. Yet, little is known about the extent of...     

Capturing hearts and minds: The influence of relational identification with the leader on followers' mobilization and cardiovascular reactivity

The influence of relational identification (RI) on leadership processes and the effects of social identity leadership on followers' responses to stress have received scant theoretical and research attention. The present research advances theoretical understanding by testing the assertion that high RI with the leader drives follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress. Two experimental scenario studies (Study 1 and Study 2) support the hypothesis that being led by an individual with whom followers perceive high RI increases follower intentional mobilization. Study 2 additionally showed that high (vs. low) RI increases follower resource appraisals and cognitive task performance. A laboratory experiment (Study 3) assessing cardiovascular (CV) reactivity showed that, compared to neutral (i.e., non-affiliated) leadership, being led by an individual with whom participants felt low RI elicited a maladaptive (i.e., threat) response to a pressurized task. In addition, relative to the low RI and neutral conditions, high RI with the leader did not engender greater challenge or threat reactivity. In conclusion, advancing social identity leadership and challenge and threat theory, findings suggest that leaders should be mindful of the deleterious effects (i.e., reduced mobilization and greater threat state) of low RI to optimize follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress.     

Cohort Differences in Parental Financial Help to Adult Children

In this article, we examine birth cohort differences in parents’ provision of monetary help to adult children with particular focus on the extent to which cohort differences in family structure and the transition to adulthood influence these changes. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study from 1994 to 2010, we compare financial help to children of three respondent cohorts as the parents in these birth cohorts from ages 53–58 to 57–62. We find that transfers to children have increased among more recent cohorts. Two trends—declining family size and children’s delay in marriage—account for part of the increase across cohorts. However, other trends, such as the increase in the number of stepchildren and increasing child’s income level, tend to decrease the observed cohort trend.