Older Adults’ Receipt of Financial Help: Does Personality Matter?

This study examined the role of personality traits in the receipt of financial help at older ages using the 2006 and 2008 waves of Health and Retirement Study data. An investigation of (1) how the five domains of personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) are associated with the receipt of financial help among older adults and (2) the relationship between personality traits and the source of financial help received was examined. Three sets of probit analyses were conducted. The results indicated that personality can predict financial help and the source of financial help. Specifically, older adults who exhibited relatively higher levels of neuroticism and agreeableness were more likely to receive financial help, whereas those who exhibited relatively higher levels of conscientiousness were less likely to receive financial help regardless of the source. Furthermore, older adults who had relatively higher levels of neuroticism were more likely to help themselves with individual sources such as credit cards whereas agreeable older adults were more likely to receive financial help from family members. These findings have implications for financial counseling, planning and education professionals, public assistance program directors, and policy makers. Understanding the effect of personality on financial decision-making can help with financial planning throughout life and inform outreach efforts for those in need of financial help.     

When Nonprofit Organizations Meet Information and Communication Technologies: How Organizational Culture Influences the Use of Traditional,Digital, and Sharing Media

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In contrast to previous studies that emphasized how resources and institutional forces influence nonprofit organizations...     

What makes hybrid insourcing successful: A new public–private partnership model for social welfare services

Outsourcing has been a key policy tool for delivering a range of social services, and regarded as more effective than insourcing or direct government provision. At the same time, it has also caused many delivery issues such as principal‐agent problems, a lack of policy coordination, and poor‐quality welfare services. While the pendulum continues to swing between insourcing and outsourcing, we aim to propose a new public–private partnership model called the “hybrid insourcing model” and examine which factors influence the performance of the model. In South Korea, around 2010, the local government in Namyangju City was the first to implement the “Hope Care Center model,” a kind of hybrid insourcing model, which has been praised for its innovation and widely emulated by central and local governments. Our analysis utilizes data collected between December 2017 and January 2018 from public sector employees and civilian staff in Namyangju and a comparable city, A. From this, we draw a number of implications, both for theory and for policy. We argue that, for public–private partnerships, active cooperation and equality are the biggest factors in contributing to positive performance. These work alongside leaders with a clear vision and with employees' positive attitude.     

Cultivating employee creativity through strategic internal communication: The role of leadership,symmetry, and feedback seeking behaviors

Using a survey of 405 full-time employees, this study examined how organizations’ internal communication influenced by leadership communication at the supervisory- and senior-levels impacts employee creativity and how employees’ feedback-seeking behaviors mediate these relationships. The results suggest that leadership communication at the supervisory and senior levels positively influence symmetrical internal communication system. The analysis also shows that symmetrical internal communication and leadership communication cause employees to seek more feedback from different interpersonal sources including supervisors, coworkers, and peers in other departments, which in turn enhances creativity. This paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for public relations and internal communication.     

Simultaneous edit-imputation and disclosure limitation for business establishment data

Business establishment microdata typically are required to satisfy agency-specified edit rules, such as balance equations and linear inequalities. Inevitably some establishments' reported data violate the edit rules. Statistical agencies correct faulty values using a process known as edit-imputation. Business establishment data also must be heavily redacted before being shared with the public; indeed, confidentiality concerns lead many agencies not to share establishment microdata as unrestricted access files. When microdata must be heavily redacted, one approach is to create synthetic data, as done in the U.S. Longitudinal Business Database and the German IAB Establishment Panel. This article presents the first implementation of a fully integrated approach to edit-imputation and data synthesis. We illustrate the approach on data from the U.S. Census of Manufactures and present a variety of evaluations of the utility of the synthetic data. The paper also presents assessments of disclosure risks for several intruder attacks. We find that the synthetic data preserve important distributional features from the post-editing confidential microdata, and have low risks for the various attacks.     

Likelihood ratio tests for multivariate normality

This paper presents some powerful omnibus tests for multivariate normality based on the likelihood ratio and the characterizations of the multivariate normal distribution. The power of the proposed tests is studied against various alternatives via Monte Carlo simulations. Simulation studies show our tests compare well with other powerful tests including multivariate versions of the Shapiro–Wilk test and the Anderson–Darling test.     

On nonparametric variogram estimation

A critical step for geostatistical prediction is estimation of variogram from the data. One of the popular methods estimating variogram is a smoothed version of classical nonparametric variogram estimator. In this paper we investigate its theoretical and empirical properties to provide useful information for using it. The main results are based on asymptotic theories (i.e., risk and central limit theorem) under nearly infill domain sampling. Simulation is also employed to make our points.     

Social Contexts and Coping Strategies of Foreign Wives in Korea: Using a Conceptual Framework of Social Identity Theory

This study aimed to address the social contexts of Korean society in which diverse social interactions of foreign wives take place and to identify coping strategies to construct positive social identities. Social identities are often reconstructed as a result of dynamic interactions with various situations. Using the conceptual framework of social identity theory, this study attempted to uncover the social contexts that shape foreign wives' social identities. This study, using the qualitative approach, selected nine Filipino and Vietnamese participants who were married to Korean men. The data were collected by in‐depth interviews, a focus group with three Vietnamese participants, field notes, participant observation, and photo documents. In the section on study findings, this study addressed Korean social contexts, in which Korean government has been providing a variety of multicultural policies and services for helping foreign wives successfully adapt to Korea. This study also found various forms of stereotypes and discrimination against foreign wives and presented their discrimination experiences. Diverse ways to cope with such negative experiences are presented in the last section. Given the findings, the researcher suggests that policies and programs should promote foreign wives' integration in Korean society.     

Social networks and the organisation of big business groups in post New Economic Policy (NEP) era in the 1990s in Malaysia

Personal ties are generally regarded as important to big business growth in Malaysia, particularly after the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1990s. Common types are informal ones established between multi-ethnic big business people and Malay key state and political leaders. Other types of ties, company directorship links and informal ties, are seldom studied especially those between the business people and former state bureaucrats and corporate professionals. Thus, by conceptualising the directorship links and informal personal ties as social networks, the author conducted a sociological analysis of some intra- and inter-ethnic directorship links and ties established by four prominent big businessmen after the NEP in the 1990s. This article reports the main finding on the links and ties becoming a common organisational mechanism of business groups owned and controlled by the businessmen, besides providing access to the state. Therefore, another understanding of inter- and intra-ethnic personal ties in big business growth, especially after the NEP is achieved.     

Exploring the role of the Senate Majority Leader's political public relations efforts

Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the U.S. Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspaper articles, and 83 policymaking documents were analyzed. Significant correlations were found supporting agenda-building linkages at both levels. Different types of information subsidies were explored, including press releases, blog posts, Facebook posts, and Twitter messages.