Global Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public Organization Review -     

Business planning: The gap between theory and practice

The author maintains that the gap between the theory and the practice of corporate planning is growing. He examines the planning systems currently used and concludes that corporate planning as advocated by the theorists is not being practised in any developed form by large corporations.     

Time lags and the weighted average cost of capital

This paper analyses the effect on the weighted average cost of capital of lags between the times of raising debt and equity finance. It shows the results of such lags when associated with differing levels of gearing and differing costs of debt and equity.     

A set covering approach to bus stop location

This paper considers the problem of locating bus stops in the context of a set covering problem. Zero-one integer programming models are suggested for use in the location of bus stops on new routes and for use in the location of express bus stops on current routes. The models may be used to locate the minimum number of (express) bus stops required to ensure that no passenger need walk more than a specified distance to reach an (express) bus stop. A modified version of the model is presented which enables the router to locate a specified number of (express) bus stops in such a manner that the total distance walked by all boarders is minimized.     

Obsessive-Compulsive Features in Pathological Lottery and Scratch-Ticket Gamblers

The results of this study support the notion that pathological gamblers drawn from the community would score higher on all three scores from the YBOCS than light gamblers. Consistent with hypotheses, pathological gamblers (lottery and scratch ticket) reported more obsessions, compulsions, and avoidance behavior than the light gamblers, and also reported having more urges to engage in injurious behaviors to themselves and others. These findings provide evidence that pathological gambling falls in a spectrum or family of disorders which have obsessive-compulsive disorder at its core. These findings support McElroy, Hudson, Philips, et al.'s (1993) suggestions of similarities between OCD and Impulse Control Disorders, and extend Blaszczynski (1999) findings of overlap between pathological gamblers and OCD in a treatment population. Heavy gamblers also reported significantly more hoarding symptoms and compulsive buying than light gamblers. More research in this area may show further evidence of a spectrum of disorders with obsessive compulsive disorder at its core, and show further links between impulse control disorders (such as pathological gambling) and OCD.     

Do unintended pregnancies carried to term lead to adverse outcomes for mother and child? An assessment in five developing countries

This paper investigates whether children later reported as having been unwanted or mistimed at conception will, when compared with children reported as wanted, show adverse effects when the following criteria are applied: receipt of antenatal care before the sixth month of gestation, supervised delivery, full vaccination of the child, and child growth (stunting). The study uses data from five recent Demographic and Health Survey enquiries in Bolivia, Egypt, Kenya, Peru, and the Philippines. In Peru, children unwanted at conception were found to have significantly worse outcomes than other children, but in the other countries, a systematic effect was found only for receipt of antenatal care. Weak measurement of the complex concept of wantedness may have contributed to these results. Birth order of the child, with which wantedness is inextricably linked, has more powerful and pervasive effects, with first-born and second-born children being much less likely to show adverse effects.     

Transgender DeKalb: observations of an advocacy campaign

In September 2000, the Community Members Against Discrimination (CMAD), a grassroots LGBT organization in DeKalb, Illinois, convinced their city council to add protection against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression. Written as an autoethnography, this essay considers the events of the campaign in terms of queer theory and the study of public argument by isolating a set of episodes that bring the reader closer to the experiences of transgender citizens who act in a public culture. The author also explores his own responsibilities as a scholar of communication, an activist, and a member of the LGBT community.     

Perceptions of drinking and related findings from the Nationwide Campuses Study

Proponents of social norms approaches maintain that correcting misperceptions of alcohol use among college students may reduce drinking and its consequences. The author used aggregate campus-level data from the Nationwide Campuses Study to test this hypothesis. He defined the misperceptions ratio as the ratio of the frequency of the "average student's" perceived alcohol use to the frequency of self-use at each campus. Each of the 57 colleges reported misperceptions ratios greater than unity. At campuses where students had more accurate perceptions of alcohol use, students were more likely to desire alcohol availability at campus events and to drink on more days throughout the year than at campuses where students had greater misperceptions of alcohol use. The author found no data to support the preferential use of social norms programming on campuses with high levels of self-reported alcohol use or binge drinking. These findings raise questions about potentially unexpected and unintended effects of social norms approaches.