Predictors of satisfaction with life among second generation migrants

As a part of a comprehensive study of the psychological acculturation of Portuguese youth born in France, this paper examines the relationship between satisfaction with life and some psychosocial variables. The sample consisted of 519 Portuguese youth resident in Paris (47% were male and 53% female). The following instruments were administered to all subjects: the Satisfaction With Life Scale, the Acculturative Attitudes Scales, the Social Anxiety Scale, two brief measures of (a) loneliness and (b) locus of control as well as a background inventory. As expected no gender differences were found, but there were significant effects on satisfaction with life related to religion, participation in an association, number of Portuguese friends and ethnic identity. Expressed satisfaction with life showed significant negative correlations with perceived difficulties of adaptation, marginalization, social anxiety, and loneliness; and positive correlations with integration and locus of control. Multiple regression analysis used to determine the significant predictor variables of satisfaction with life indicated that the strongest predictors were loneliness and perceived state of health.     

THE CONTRIBUTION OF CULTURAL THEORY TO UNDERSTANDING THE EMBEDDEDNESS OF ARGUMENTS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

The aim of this article is to explore the contribution of cultural theory to understanding the embeddedness of arguments in the implementation process. The application of cultural theory to studies of implementation entails investigating the implementation of reforms as different normative arguments pursuing different organizational solutions. Institutional theory posits that implementation of reforms in organizations depends on how well the values defending the reform match the basic values of the organization. Cultural theory contributes to institutional theory in two ways: firstly, cultural theory is an instrument for investigating the values that defend the reform; secondly, cultural theory posits that an organization consists of more than one value base. Consequently, cultural theory does not offer a fixed prediction concerning the outcome of implementation.     

Crise de la rationalité industrielle et transformations de la prescription. Une étude de cas

Studies of industrial rationality should be reconsidered given the thoroughgoing changes under way. We have switched from a Taylorist rationality based on Scientific Management, which claimed to fit production into a single viewpoint, to a dissemination of the sources of the directions to be followed and an overall destabilization of any attempt at rationalization, and as a consequence, to a looser sense of rationality even among engineers. But this does not at all benefit wage-earners. Often without bearings, they have to cope with instructions; but have a harder time doing so whenever their organization provides them with few tools for coping and whenever the instructions, or part of them, are contradictory.     

Debt management in a small open economy: A theoretical and an empirical study for Belgium

This article analyzes the effects of debt management and its consequence for the control of base money in a small open economy (Belgium). The study compares the effects obtained from a small theoretical model with the results of a larger empirical model.The theoretical model focuses on the financing of government by money operation, on the bond rate, and on the international reserve of the Central Bank.The empirical model is a medium-term one, including the demand and the supply sectors of the economy and permitting simultaneous analysis of real and financial variables.The effects of an endogeneous or exogenous debt management have been studied by numerical simulation of modification in the public expenditure, the world trade, and the discount rate.     

Global risk management

Industries that deal with hazardous systems are faced with the task of managing a spectrum of risks within resource contraints. They have essentially two options that can be combined in a global risk-management strategy: insurance (loss sharing) and risk mitigation through technical and organizational measures. In this article, global risk-management strategies based on probabilistic risk analysis and its extension to include management factors are described. Some issues and solutions are illustrated through practical examples, drawn mostly from the recent research of the Industrial Engineering Risk Research Group at Stanford (the tiles of the U.S. Space Shuttle, offshore platforms, marine pipelines, and anesthesia in modern hospitals).     

Unbiased estimation of income inequality

In a previous paper Gastwirth shows that a broad family of measures of inequality can be accurately estimated when the tax data are known in groups (more precisely, when we know the number of returns in each of several class intervals and their corresponding average income). In the present paper we show that some measures of the preceding family can be unbiasedly estimated when the tax data are individually known for a sample from the population. Specifically, we construct unbiased estimators of a particular measure of inequality in the samplings with and without replacement, and in the stratified samplings with and without replacement.