Legitimation, Geographical Scale, and Organizational Density: Regional Patterns of Foundings of American Automobile Producers, 1885–1981

Do organizational processes of legitimation and competition operate within different boundaries corresponding to different geographical levels of analysis? Following Hannan et al. (1995), this analysis explores the possibility that legitimation operates on a broader geographical scale (less constrained by political and physical barriers) than does competition. We test the argument by examining founding rates of American automobile producers from 1885 to 1981, within the framework of density-dependent modeling. Our findings suggest that within the United States, legitimation operated on a national scale while competition proceeded primarily on a regional level. Comparison with automobile producer populations in Europe yields differences in application and interpretation of the theory.     

Risk factors for suicide in Taiwanese college students

OBJECTIVE: The authors investigated the personality characteristics, psychopathology, parenting style, and family function among Taiwanese college students with high, moderate, and low suicidal risks. PARTICIPANTS: The sample included 2,919 first-year college students (1,414 men, 1,505 women) from a university in Taipei, Taiwan. METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire assessed domains covering demographics, personality, psychopathology, frequency of substance use, parenting style, family functioning, and suicidal behaviors. The authors used mixed models for data analysis. RESULTS: The authors observed a positive linear trend between increased suicidal tendency and levels of neuroticism, harm avoidance, novelty seeking, psychopathology, and parenting styles of low affection, overprotection, and authoritarian controlling. Use of tobacco and alcohol and impaired family adaptation and cohesion were associated with high and moderate suicidal risks. CONCLUSIONS: Personality, psychopathology, substance use, and familial factors are important correlates of suicidal risks among college students in Taiwan. Optimal suicide prevention strategies in the college setting should incorporate the multiple facets of suicidal risks.     

Adolescents' Daily Assistance to the Family in Response to Maternal Need

Although children's provision of family assistance is a common routine, little is understood about the day‐to‐day variability that may exist in children's assistance behaviors. Guided by a family systems framework, the current study examined whether Mexican American adolescents' provision of family assistance was contingent on daily maternal need. Adolescents (N = 354, 49% males, M_age = 14.96 years) and their mothers (M_age = 41.55 years) each completed reports on 14 consecutive days. The results indicated that adolescents generally responded to maternal need, being more likely to help their families on days when their mothers worked or felt fatigued. This daily contingency was modified by family and adolescent characteristics, with adolescents thought to generally engage in low levels of assistance (i.e., youngest males and those in families with little economic strain) increasing their help when their mothers were fatigued. In contrast, daily maternal work did not appear to stimulate greater assistance among families with low levels of economic strain.     

Research in play therapy: A 10-year review in Taiwan

This study represented a 10-year review of 86 master's theses and doctoral dissertations on play therapy that had been conducted in Taiwan from 2002 to 2011. Particular attention was directed to the intention of research, the traits of participants, the characteristics of play therapy, and the research methods. Results indicated that the most frequently studied population was children and adolescents (54.6%), followed by play therapists (25.6%), parents/care-givers of children (16.3%), and teachers of children (1.2%). Findings revealed the types of research were qualitative (n = 59; 68.6%), quantitative (n = 7; 8.1%), and mixed methods (n = 20; 23.3%). Results are discussed concerning implications for counselor educators and further research on play therapy.     

Estimation of the parameters of the Gompertz distribution under the first failure-censored sampling plan

This article presents the goodness-of-fit tests for the Laplace distribution based on its maximum entropy characterization result. The critical values of the test statistics estimated by Monte Carlo simulations are tabulated for various window and sample sizes. The test statistics use an entropy estimator depending on the window size; so, the choice of the optimal window size is an important problem. The window sizes for yielding the maximum power of the tests are given for selected sample sizes. Power studies are performed to compare the proposed tests with goodness-of-fit tests based on the empirical distribution function. Simulation results report that entropy-based tests have consistently higher power than EDF tests against almost all alternatives considered.     

A model of the adoption of radio frequency identification technology: The case of logistics service firms

Globalization and advances in information technology represent both realities and opportunities for enterprises in the 21st century. This paper aims to broaden understanding of service innovation as a critical organizational capability through which the adoption of information technology influences firm performance. This study examines how the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology influences the operational performance of logistics service firms. We develop the RFID adoption model based on the interorganizational information systems (IOS) view of the firm that integrates the various strands of research into the framework. The study draws from the related information technology and interorganizational information systems literatures to explore organizational factors associated with the adoption of RFID. A model of the associations between information technology and interorganizational information systems use, social support, power structure, organizational readiness, procedural flexibility, and top management support is developed, and hypotheses are advanced about the relationships among these constructs. An empirical survey was conducted among 500 logistics service firms in Taiwan. A total of 131 valid observations were analyzed using the partial least squares technique. Results showed that RFID adoption has positive effects on business practices, which in turn improves operational performance. We address the value of certain interactive firm behaviors in RFID adoption and identify related constructs of RFID adoption in terms of their efficiency and value for logistics service firms. These results have implications for both education and practice.     

剖析高级社会工作师专科设置与实训效益——以台湾“专科社会工作师”改革经验借鉴

随着社会进步,各行各业分工日趋细致,大陆社会工作界该如何走向"教学─考试─训练─进用"的行业规范。本文尝试以人群服务业视角来看待社会工作职业资格制度未来发展,从当前社会问题的现况来界定医疗社会工作、司法社会工作、学校社会工作、社区社会工作等四大类别社会工作服务范围与工作内容,再深入探讨社会工作行业如何进一步与政府部门、事业单位进行系统性连结,以跨中央地方、行业协会的现有资源来支撑社会工作专业分类的理论依据。同时,另外提出现阶段由官方主导社会工作师考试所存在的问题,同步对照台湾"立法部门"近年对"专科社会工作师法"借鉴欧美专科医师制度的成因进行分析,期盼未来在大陆制定高级社会工作师职业水平考试实施办法时,是否严格执行各实习单位的实践年资纳入考证环节,再藉由成立专科社会工作学会来主导高级专科社会工作师,走向服务专科化、服务全面化的专业技术行业之列。     

Probabilistic tolerance design for a subsystem under burr distribution using taguchi's loss functions

Taguchi (1986) has derived tolerances for subcomponents, subsystems, parts and materials in which the relationship between a higher-level (Y) and a lower-level (X) quality characteristic is assumed to be deterministic and linear, namely, Y=_α+βX, without an error term. Tsai (1990) developed a probabilistic tolerance design for a subsystem in which a bivariate normal distribution between the above two quality characteristics as well as Taguchi's quadratic loss function were considered together to develop a closed form solution of the tolerance design for a subsystem. The Burr family is very rich for fitting sample data, and has positive domain. A bivariate Burr distribution can describe a nonlinear relationship between two quality characteristics, hence, it is adopted instead of a bivariate normal distribution and the simple solutions of three probabilistic tolerance desings for a subsystem are obtained for three cases of “nominal-is-best”, “smaller-is-berrer”, and “larger-is-beter” quality characteristics, by using Taguchi’ los functions, respectively.     

A Hybrid Approximation Bayesian Test of Variance Components for Longitudinal Data

The test of variance components of possibly correlated random effects in generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) can be used to examine if there exists heterogeneous effects. The Bayesian test with Bayes factors offers a flexible method. In this article, we focus on the performance of Bayesian tests under three reference priors and a conjugate prior: an approximate uniform shrinkage prior, modified approximate Jeffreys' prior, half-normal unit information prior and Wishart prior. To compute Bayes factors, we propose a hybrid approximation approach combining a simulated version of Laplace's method and importance sampling techniques to test the variance components in GLMMs.     

Confidence intervals for the largest mean from k correlated normal populations

Let X= (X₁,…, X_k)’ be a k-variate (k ≥ 2) normal random vector with unknown population mean vector μ = (μ₁ ,…, μ_k)’ and covariance matrix Σ of order k and let μ_[1] ≤ … ≤ μ_[k] be the ordered values of the μ ’ s. No prior knowledge of the pairing of the μ_[i] with the X_j. (or μ_[i] with the σ_j ²) is assumed for any i and j (1 ≤ i, j ≤ k). Based on a random sample of N independent vector observations on X, this paper considers both upper and lower (one-sided) and two-sided 100γ% (0 < γ < 1) confidence intervals for μ_[k] and μ_[1], the largest and the smallest mean, respectively, when Σ is known and when Σ is equal to σ²R with common unknown variance σ² > 0 and correlation matrix R known, respectively. An optimum two-sided confidence interval via finding the shortest length from this class is also considered. Necessary tables and computer program to actually apply these procedures are provided.