What fuels the fire: Job- or task-specific motivation (or both)? On the hierarchical and multidimensional nature of teacher motivation in relation to job burnout

Drawing on a hierarchical (job and task level) and multidimensional conceptualisation of work motivation (intrinsic, identified, introjected, and external regulations), this study examines relationships between motivational regulations and burnout. Participants were 806 French-Canadian teachers working in public elementary and high schools. Results reveal different associations between burnout and the regulations that drive teachers to engage in their overall job or in specific tasks: autonomous regulations (intrinsic and identified) are negatively associated with burnout but more negatively at the job than task level, whereas controlled regulations (introjected and external) are positively associated with burnout but more positively at the task than job level. This study provides valuable insights into how teachers’ motivations towards both the job and tasks can foster or prevent burnout symptoms. Implications for theory and research on burnout and work motivation are discussed.     

An integrated closed-loop product lifecycle management approach for reverse logistics design

Nowadays, reverse logistics is gaining importance for many companies in different industries. This importance is rooted in the fact that it generates profit and decreases the environmental impacts of products. Even though the decrease of environmental impacts is an indispensable requisite, reverse logistics design is only driven by cost indicators. The main reason behind this high cost is access to environmental information is difficult and is directly linked to data all along the lifecycle of the product. This paper presents a method by which reverse logistics design integrates environmental impacts based on the management of closed-loop product lifecycle. This method is divided into two processes: from beginning of life to end of life and from end of life to beginning of life. The first process integrates product data in order to calculate environmental impacts of the potential reverse logistics networks, whereas the second process selects the most appropriate reverse logistics network before optimising the product based on this particular network. The proposition is illustrated by a case study on a recycled aluminium automotive part.     

Structured regularization for conditional Gaussian graphical models

Conditional Gaussian graphical models are a reparametrization of the multivariate linear regression model which explicitly exhibits (i) the partial covariances between the predictors and the responses, and (ii) the partial covariances between the responses themselves. Such models are particularly suitable for interpretability since partial covariances describe direct relationships between variables. In this framework, we propose a regularization scheme to enhance the learning strategy of the model by driving the selection of the relevant input features by prior structural information. It comes with an efficient alternating optimization procedure which is guaranteed to converge to the global minimum. On top of showing competitive performance on artificial and real datasets, our method demonstrates capabilities for fine interpretation, as illustrated on three high-dimensional datasets from spectroscopy, genetics, and genomics.     

Different ways of knowing a child and their relations to mother‐reported autonomy support

We considered how different forms of child knowledge (i.e., mothers’ reports of taking their child's perspective, their accurate knowledge in the form of precise predictions of their child's ratings regarding distress/comforting and compliance/discipline situations, and their perceived knowledge) are differentially associated with mother‐reported autonomy support (i.e., providing meaningful rationales, providing choice, and acknowledging feelings; Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt, 1984 ). Mothers and their children (141 dyads, M = 11 years old at Time 1) participated in a two‐wave longitudinal study with assessments made two years apart. The only form of knowledge that predicted changes in autonomy support was perspective‐taking. Autonomy support, in turn, indirectly predicted changes in distress/comforting accuracy through child‐reported self‐disclosure and directly predicted changes in perceived knowledge. These findings underline the importance of differentiating among forms of child knowledge in the study of socialization processes.     

Adaptive methods for sequential importance sampling with application to state space models

In this paper we discuss new adaptive proposal strategies for sequential Monte Carlo algorithms—also known as particle filters—relying on criteria evaluating the quality of the proposed particles. The choice of the proposal distribution is a major concern and can dramatically influence the quality of the estimates. Thus, we show how the long-used coefficient of variation (suggested by Kong et al. in J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 89(278–288):590–599, 1994) of the weights can be used for estimating the chi-square distance between the target and instrumental distributions of the auxiliary particle filter. As a by-product of this analysis we obtain an auxiliary adjustment multiplier weight type for which this chi-square distance is minimal. Moreover, we establish an empirical estimate of linear complexity of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the involved distributions. Guided by these results, we discuss adaptive designing of the particle filter proposal distribution and illustrate the methods on a numerical example. This work was partly supported by the National Research Agency (ANR) under the program “ANR-05-BLAN-0299”.     

Books received as of April 30, 1985

This research focuses on insiders’ views of marital sex and their dyadic patterning. The analyses were conducted based on seventy‐two (72) couples’ assessments of their recent sexual interactions. Non‐genital and genital activities were assessed as a function of the respondents’ and the actors’ gender, and as a function of constructs that were specific to the marital partners as individuals and as a marital dyad. Consistent differences were found between husbands’ and wives’ perceptions of discrepancies within their couple. Regardless of respondents’ gender, couples reported that wives were genitally less active than husbands and that this was in accordance with the wives’ preferences. The results are discussed with respect to the advantages of using a dyadic methodology for measuring dimensions of sex which involve interpersonal behaviors.     

A decision support system for modelling and implementing the supply network configuration and operations scheduling problem in the machine tool industry

This paper presents a decision support system to simultaneously solve the supply network configuration problem and the operations scheduling problem for the machine tool industry. A novel database structure, which is able to consider alternative operations and alternative bills of material, has been used. An algorithm for complete enumeration to determine all the feasible solutions using stroke graphs is introduced. A multiagent-based simulator evaluates the different key performance indicators that the supply network deals with for each alternative solution (e.g. workload, profits, delivery times, etc.) to determine that ‘satisficed’ by the collaborative decision-making among its members. A case study based on a Spanish company that assembles highly customised machines and tools in several European plants is considered. From the experiments results based on data linked to this industry, it will be demonstrated that the tool is potentially useful for stakeholders and for the central decision-maker to make decisions collaboratively in a multisite context case.     

Segregation in social networks based on acquaintanceship and trust

Using 2006 General Social Survey data, the authors compare levels of segregation by race and along other dimensions of potential social cleavage in the contemporary United States. Americans are not as isolated as the most extreme recent estimates suggest. However, hopes that "bridging" social capital is more common in broader acquaintanceship networks than in core networks are not supported. Instead, the entire acquaintanceship network is perceived by Americans to be about as segregated as the much smaller network of close ties. People do not always know the religiosity, political ideology, family behaviors, or socioeconomic status of their acquaintances, but perceived social divisions on these dimensions are high, sometimes rivaling racial segregation in acquaintanceship networks. The major challenge to social integration today comes from the tendency of many Americans to isolate themselves from others who differ on race, political ideology, level of religiosity, and other salient aspects of social identity.     

Unionization and Labour‐market Discrimination: A Closer Look at Non‐unionized Workers

This paper introduces a model that examines the effects of unions on pay and hiring gaps between non‐unionized men and women in the context of imperfect competition. Although the model does not question the advantages unions obtain for their members, it does show that (1) unions increase wage and occupational discrimination for non‐unionized workers; (2) the non‐unionized sector does not constitute a good comparison group for use in analysing the impact of unions on gender discrimination; and (3) public policies targeting gender differences in occupational sorting can also have a positive impact on gender wage differentials.