Beyond resistance: Exploring health managers’ propensity for participatory evaluation in a developing country

The evaluation of interventions is becoming increasing common and now often seeks to involve managers in the process. Such practical participatory evaluation (PPE) aims to increase the use of evaluation results through the participation of stakeholders. This study focuses on the propensity of health managers for PPE, as measured through the components of learning, working in groups, use of judgment and use of systematic methods. We interviewed 16 health managers to determine the meaning they ascribe to these four components in their practice in a developing country, Haïti. We found that learning was often informal and that all managers attached a negative meaning to the use of judgment. Working in groups was favored by all managers, while the health managers viewed the use of systematic methods differently than do evaluators. The administrative health managers generally ranked lower in propensity for PPE than did their clinical colleagues. Implications for the practice of evaluation are discussed in relation to the work styles exhibited by managers in everyday practice, the proactive repetition of actions, the control exercised by formal procedures, and the collective versus “solitary” image of one's environment of action.     

Please do not pirate it, you will rob the poor! An experimental investigation on the effect of charitable donations on piracy

Producers in the recording industry frequently market products for which a part of the proceeds goes to charitable causes. We investigate whether a corporate pledge to donate a portion of profits to a charitable cause will decrease the extent to which customers illegally obtain that company's products. Donations to charitable causes may increase the moral intensity of piracy (robbing the poor rather than robbing the rich) and consequently may reduce the willingness to pirate. This rationale is empirically tested through a dual empirical strategy, that is, a market survey and a laboratory experiment. We show that market piracy decreases when a very low or very high donation mechanism is implemented. Nevertheless, for intermediate levels of transfer, piracy increases again.     

Consistent selection of the actual model in regression analysis

SUMMARY In regression analysis, a best subset of regressors is usually selected by minimizing Mallows's C statistic or some other equivalent criterion, such as the Akaike lambda information criterion or cross-validation. It is known that the resulting procedure suffers from a lack of consistency that can lead to a model with too many variables. For this reason, corrections have been proposed that yield consistent procedures. The object of this paper is to show that these corrected criteria, although asymptotically consistent, are usually too conservative for finite sample sizes. The paper also proposes a new correction of Mallows's statistic that yields better results. A simulation study is conducted that shows that the proposed criterion performs well in a variety of situations.     

Estimating the concentration of the Langevin distribution

We propose an estimator of the concentration parameter of the Langevin distribution that is based on the spatial median. We derive its asymptotic distribution, compute its asymptotic efficiency, and show that it possesses some interesting stability properties under contamination.     

Impacts of collaboration and network indicators on patent quality: The case of Canadian nanotechnology innovation

This article studies the impact of collaboration and co-inventorship network characteristics of Canadian nanotechnology inventors on the quality of their inventions. We investigate the impact of four types of variables on patent quality, using the number of claims as a proxy for quality: (a) the presence of highly central inventors; (b) the presence of star inventors; (c) repeated collaboration; (d) international collaboration. We show that the presence of more central inventors and of stars in the research team has a positive influence on patent quality, while repeated collaboration has a negative impact. Patents owned by foreign organisations, controlling for whether assignees are firm, yields patents of higher quality.     

Traditional society, political society and Québec sociology: 1945–1980

L'analyse de la production sociologique au Québec, de 1945 à 1980, ne saurait être entreprise sans faire référence à la transformation des conditions generates d'enonciation qu'a connue la société québécoise durant la période. On peut schématiquement regrouper cette sociographie en quatre courants distincts. Le premier, de 1945 à 1960, se donne comme un savoir critique dc l'adaptation illustrant l'inadéquation de la référence au traditionalisme. Le début des années soixante marque le passage à la dominance d'une forme de la représentation présentant désormais le Québec comme une société politique. Une sociologie fonctionnelle de l'adaptation se développe dés lors, liée à la mise en place de L'État keynésien. Les années soixante-dix voient au contraire l'affirmation d'une sociologie de l'émancipation. Divisée en deux courants antagonistes, culturaliste et politiste, cette sociologie travaille à la redéfinition d'une société québécoise dorénavant soumise aux pleines déterminations de la modernité. The modernity of sociological production in Québec from 1945 to 1980 cannot be attempted without referring to the transformation in the general conditions of Québec's expression of itself as a society during this period. We can regroup this sociography schematically into four distinct approaches: the first, from 1945 to 1960, presented itself as a form of critical knowledge of adaptation which illustrated the inadequacy of references to traditionalism. The beginning of the 1960s marked the transition towards the predominance of a representational form which thereafter presented Québec as a political society. In the third tendency a functionalist sociology, linked to the consolidation of the Keynesian state, took root. The 1970s saw in contradistinction the affirmation of a sociology of emanicipation. Divided between two mutually antagonistic approaches, culturalist and political, Québec sociology is working towards the redefinition of a Québecois society henceforth caught in the determining web of modernity.     

Accuracy of the judgment of facial expression of emotions as a function of sex and level of education

The purpose of this study is to examine the recognition of facial expressions of six emotions as a function of sex and level of education (high school, college, university) of the subjects. Three hundred French-speaking citizens of Quebec had to judge which emotion was expressed in various facial stimuli presented on slides. Results show that overall, the recognition of emotions was very good. However, there were significant and strong differences between emotions and sex and levels of education did not have strong effects on the results.This research was supported by grant EQ-1717 from Fonds FCAC (Gouvernment du Quebec).     

Analysing intangible resources and managing knowledge in a supply chain context

This paper reports the initial empirical work (and related findings) which has been carried out in a UK Government funded project titled `The Development of Partnership Strategies and the Management of Knowledge which Underpins Capabilities'. The companies collaborating in the research were Cellnet plc, Flymo Ltd and four of their strategic suppliers. This paper describes the validation of a technique for analysing the role of intangible resources in the development of partnership strategies. The technique codifies the tacit knowledge which a company's managers have of their company's strengths thereby enabling this understanding to be communicated to partners and used as a basis for joint strategic development. The paper goes on to outline a technique which is currently being tested for managing the knowledge associated with inter-organisational innovation.