A cross-cultural investigation of the shared values relationship

Data from managers in Australia (N=505) and Hong Kong (N=653) support the findings of studies using American managers and their companies that shared values, or person-organization values fit, is strongly related to positive work attitudes. This relationship is unaffected by culture, as two-way analysis of variance reveals no interaction effect between shared values and country. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Board characteristics and the value relevance of fair values

This study investigates whether board characteristics affect the value relevance of fair value estimates in financial firms under International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 13. Specifically, the study will focus on whether a better and more efficient monitoring of managers, after the adoption of this new regulation, has an effect on the information quality of fair values. IFRS 13 requires firms to disclose a fair value hierarchy containing three levels: Level 1 (quoted prices in active markets), Level 2 (inputs other than quoted prices that are observable either directly or indirectly) and Level 3 (unobservable inputs generated by entities). The results indicate that, in a post IFRS 13 era, board independence and gender diversity have a positive effect on the value relevance of fair value estimates (Level 3). In addition, firms with larger boards have lower information quality of firm-generated fair value estimates. Moreover, initial analysis shows that all fair values are value relevant to investors and the adoption of IFRS 13 has blurred the lines between the three levels in the fair value hierarchy. Hence, IFRS 13 has successfully reduced the information asymmetry related to fair value estimates.     

Social Security and Demographic Shocks

An overlapping generations model of social security with shocks to the productivity of labor and capital and demographic shocks is studied. We focus attention on stationary long run allocations. An allocation is interim optimal if there does not exist another feasible allocation that improves the expected welfare of all generations, computed conditionally on the state of the world when they are born. We characterize the set of interim optimal allocations and study the equilibria associated with various institutional forms of social security from the point of view of this optimality criterion. We obtain the analogs of the two traditional welfare theorems of microeconomic theory. Assume that there exists a financial asset in fixed quantity, which supports some (non null) intergenerational transfers. Then the rational expectations equilibrium allocation of this economy is interim optimal. Conversely, any stationary interim optimal allocation can be supported by such an equilibrium, with adequate lump sum transfers.     

考虑排放成本的共享电动汽车和共享停车位最优组合定价研究

相比于燃油汽车而言,共享电动汽车具有排放低,能耗小的优点。然而城市中心区域共享电动汽车有限的停车泊位阻碍了共享电动汽车的出行需求。本文首先分析了在城市中心区域的办公建筑物附近建立毗邻居住区共享停车位作为共享电动汽车的补充停车网点的可行性;其次,提出了以共享电动汽车+共享停车位(Shared Electric Vehicle+Shared Parking, SEV+SP)相结合的方式,作为早高峰私有小汽车和公共交通出行的一种补充方式,并基于瓶颈经济学探讨SEV+SP新出行模式的定价将如何影响社会效益、交通拥堵和系统交通排放成本。最后本文设计案例分析综合考虑社会效益和系统交通排放成本时,共享电动汽车时变租赁费用和共享停车费用的最优组合定价,以此为SEV+SP新出行模式提供定价依据。结果建议综合考虑社会效益和交通排放成本时,应设置较低的共享停车费用和较高的时变租赁费用;建议管理者在鼓励SEV+SP出行模式时,应充分考虑交通系统的拥堵压力,从减少交通排放的角度,应选取较小的权重指标。     

Demographic Influences on Risk Perceptions

Over the past 15 years, psychologists have empirically investigated how people perceive technological, consumer, and natural hazards. The psychometric-attitudes to risk being summarized by three factors: "dread," whether the risk is known, and personal exposure to the risk. The results have been used to suggest that certain types of hazards are viewed very differently from other hazards. The purpose of this paper is somewhat different, in that it investigates whether individual demographic characteristics influence psychometric perceptions of risk. This paper makes use of a large, professionally conducted, survey of a wide cross-section of the residents of metropolitan Chicago. One thousand adults were interviewed in a random-digit dial telephone survey, producing a useable dataset of about 800. Data on the three risk factors mentioned above were obtained on 7-point scales for four common hazards: aviation accidents, fires in the home, automobile accidents, and stomach cancer. The survey also collected demographic data on respondents'age, schooling, income, sex, and race. Regressions were then conducted to relate the demographic characteristics to risk perceptions. Some strong general conclusions can be drawn. The results suggest that women, people with lower levels of schooling and income, younger people, and blacks have more dread of hazards. The exception being age-related illnesses which, not unnaturally, are feared by older people. Unlike previous literature, we cannot substantiate the argument that these groups of people are less informed about hazards and thus less accepting of them. The most likely leading explanation of the relationship between demographic factors and dread of a hazard is the perceived personal exposure to the hazard. People with greater perceived exposure to a hazard are more fearful.     

Changing values and lifestyles

It has been apparent for several years that changes in people's values in the United States, have been occurring more frequently and having greater impact than has previously been experienced. The most significant impacts appear to be coming from people whose values and lifestyles are considerably less materialistic than traditional American values.Work at SRI, spanning more than a decade, had identified a new and rapidly growing group of people, the ‘inner directeds’; while more traditional groups—‘outer directeds’ and ‘money restricted’—have been declining as percentages of the population. These three major groups and their subdivisions are described in the article and particular emphasis is given to the inner directed group since it is likely to have the greatest impact on business, the market and government.     

Finding paths with minimum shared edges

Motivated by a security problem in geographic information systems, we study the following graph theoretical problem: given a graph G, two special nodes s and t in G, and a number k, find k paths from s to t in G so as to minimize the number of edges shared among the paths. This is a generalization of the well-known disjoint paths problem. While disjoint paths can be computed efficiently, we show that finding paths with minimum shared edges is NP-hard. Moreover, we show that it is even hard to approximate the minimum number of shared edges within a factor of $2^{\log^{1-\varepsilon}n}$ , for any constant ε>0. On the positive side, we show that there exists a (k?1)-approximation algorithm for the problem, using an adaption of a network flow algorithm. We design some heuristics to improve the quality of the output, and provide empirical results.     

Demographic and Attitudinal Correlates of Employee Satisfaction with an ESOP

A firm's adoption of an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) has been hypothesized to increase employee productivity. Resulting employee productivity is hypothesized to improve firm profitability and thus ultimately improve stock performance. Most studies to date have tested potential relationships between the mere presence of an ESOP and changes in employee productivity and firm profitability. Few studies have attempted to identify the variables that are associated with employee satisfaction with an ESOP. In order to maximize the productivity gains associated with the adoption of an ESOP, researchers must first identify the relationships and variables most likely to positively affect employee attitudes and subsequently their satisfaction toward an ESOP. The purpose of this paper is to identify the demographic and attitudinal correlates of employee satisfaction with an ESOP. This exploration will provide a more substantive foundation for future research efforts in the area. Correlation and regression results indicated that employees' perceived influence on decision-making, perceived pay equity and perceived influence on stock performance, when examined separately, were each significant correlates of ESOP satisfaction. When combined with the modelled employee demographics in a step-wise regression model, only employees' perceived influence on stock performance, perceived influence on decision-making and age explained a statistically significant amount of variance in ESOP satisfaction.     

Population Changes in Europe. Demographic and Social Prospects and Problems

Abstract. Over recent years, the European Community has experienced profound demographic changes which, to a large extent, have already determined its demographic future. One of the more significant consequences of demographic and social trends is a marked fragmentation of the family with people giving absolute priority to the individual dimension in their lives and in terms of society as a whole. Legal regulations and administrative practice have not totally–and not everywhere – adapted to the far-reaching changes in the family so as to adequately protect the family and its weaker members in particular: children, the elderly, the disabled, people with mental and social illnesses, the poor. In this field, some measures will be proposed in this paper. The imbalances in demographic-occupational growth in the Euro-Mediterranean area–the area with which the EC is most directly in contact–are and will be of an exceptional amplitude, as has already been shown, to an extent never before experienced in the history of mankind. We must ask ourselves if this very strong differential pressure, which is also of a political and socio-economic nature, will lead to steady and long-lasting migratory flows. Some considerations regarding the future action and intervention of the EC close the paper.     

公务员谈面试实战技巧

成功的练习一定要掌握一个前提,就是力求真实,无论哪一种练习方式,都要力求把自己置于真实的面试情境中,如此才能有效果。     

Decentralised bilevel model for shared inventory management

In this study, we consider the case of a large corporation that owns a warehouse and two concurrent chains. The company opted for shared inventory policy. The warehouse is looking into minimising its inventory cost and at the same time reducing the fluctuation of the personnel. The chains, independently, are trying to minimise their inventory costs. The warehouse plays the role of a leader in optimising its objectives and, as followers, the two chains try to satisfy their objectives. The problem is formulated into a decentralised nonlinear bilevel programming problem. We also consider the fuzziness of some parameters due to the imprecise available information. We propose the mathematical model and we solve it for our specific case.     

Group leadership and shared task representations in decision making groups

The development of adequate shared understanding of the task is of critical importance to group functioning. Group leaders play an important role in this respect, as a key function of leadership is to shape group members' understanding of their job. In the present study we focus on decision making groups with distributed information and examine how group leaders shape members' mental representations of the group decision task through leadership behavior rooted in their own representations of the task. We propose that the extent to which the group leader has task representations that emphasize information exchange and integration affects group members' task representations, group information elaboration, and decision quality. We tested these hypotheses in an experiment (N = 94 three-person groups) in which we manipulated whether a group leader was present and whether this leader held representations emphasizing information elaboration. Results supported the hypotheses, and suggest that team leaders may play an important role in creating a socially shared understanding of team tasks.     

Culture as a consequence: A multi-level multivariate meta-analysis of the effects of individual and country characteristics on work-related cultural values

Culture as a consequence is a neglected topic. Addressing this, we explore what factors are related to and potentially shape culture, what explains cultural variations within countries, and what the relationship is between cultural values at the individual and national levels. To answer these questions, we use a multi-level multivariate meta-analysis of 508 studies. The findings indicate that national and individual cultural values may be determined by the micro characteristics of age, gender, education, and socio-economic status as well as the macro characteristics of wealth and freedom. This provides a basis for explaining cultural change, both at the individual and national levels. Also, up to 90% of the variance in cultural values is found to reside within countries, stressing that national averages poorly represent specific individuals.     

Cultural and societal influences on shared leadership in globally dispersed teams

Leading globally dispersed teams poses critical challenges, especially if the team members are not only physically separated, but also culturally diverse and their tasks are dynamic and complex. It has been argued that shared leadership behaviors, such as continuous reflection, anticipation of a team's information needs, and initiating a team's social influence, positively influence virtual team performance. Country-level effects on shared leadership in globally dispersed teams, however, have been neglected. Building on the country institutional profile developed by Kostova (1997), we argue that regulative, cognitive, and normative components influence the likelihood that the individual will engage in shared leadership behaviors. Analyzing the differences between the institutional profiles of team members' home countries as reflected in institutional diversity as a team-level property, we furthermore point to different levels of institutional diversity as an enabling or hindering condition of shared leadership.     

Exact algorithms for scheduling programs with shared tasks

We study a scheduling problem where the jobs we have to perform are composed of one or more tasks. If two jobs sharing a non-empty subset of tasks are scheduled on the same machine, then these shared tasks have to be performed only once. This kind of problem is known in the literature under the names of VM-PACKING or PAGINATION. Our objective is to schedule a set of these objects on two parallel identical machines, with the aim of minimizing the makespan. This problem is NP-complete as an extension of the PARTITION problem. In this paper we present three exact algorithms with worst-case time-complexity guarantees, by exploring different branching techniques. Our first algorithm focuses on the relation between jobs sharing one or more symbols in common, whereas the two other algorithms branches on the shared symbols.

     

Voices and values: Linking values with participation in OR/MS in public policy making

It is now widely accepted that public policy development requires both an appreciation of public values and an ability to involve insights from local people. Operational research (OR) has made some contributions to public policy development, and there has been a call to use problem-structuring methods (PSM) in this environment. This growing need for greater use of OR/management science (MS) in policy making is due to its ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. This paper presents some research about values and local people's voices in public policy making, which the authors believe present a challenge to OR/MS and to the use of PSM. The paper will describe a framework for understanding values and exploring insights into including local voices in policy making using PSMs. Key to the framework is in the emphasis on differences, rather than similarities, in value priorities. A case study in which local people as well as decisions makers and politicians were engaged in a process to decide the future of a local hospital will be described.     

Leadership,values, and subordinate self-concepts

This article discusses two means by which leaders can impact on subordinate self-regulatory processes — making particular patterns of values salient and activating specific subordinate self-concepts. Research indicating compatible structures among values and self-identities is discussed, and it is suggested that such structures are automatically related by networks of mutual activation or inhibition. The potential of this framework for advancing leadership practice and research is also discussed.