From organization development to corporate development at Trebor

This article is a case history of a medium-sized, family-owned business where the corporate planning activity has been taken over by the Executive Board, which is concerned with a careful definition and dissemination of company strategy and with focusing action in the form of long-term planning projects. The organizational learning approach is evolutionary and incremental, involving—as in the Japanese style of management— many levels in project development.     

Panel accretion and external validity in adolescent substance use research

This study investigates the relationship of panel accretion to panel attrition and examines its impact on threats to external validity in adolescent substance use research. Panel accretion involves the addition of new participants to a panel design after initial baseline data has been obtained. Accretion occurs in longitudinal studies in which data is routinely gathered on all participants, as is often the case in prevention or epidemiological research on adolescent substance use. Accretion, attrition, and panel findings for three, 2-year panel samples in grades 7 through 9 are examined. The results indicate that accretion and attrition samples have an isomorphic relationship to one another on a range of dependent measures when drawn from the same population. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for adolescent substance use research, the examination of validity threats due to panel bias, and understanding the ecological validity of research findings.     

Gender differentials in poverty-mortality well-being

"This paper explores the application of a life table approach to the analysis of poverty [in the United States]. After reviewing trends in gender differentials in poverty and mortality, we investigate an indicator of poverty-mortality well-being. The rationale for this approach is that to some extent poverty and mortality are causally interrelated phenomena which are both fundamental to well-being. The empirical results indicate that females are expected to live more years in poverty than are males, but females are expected to live more years in nonpoverty as well. Although the gender differential in poverty rates has increased to the disadvantage of females, and although most of the greater poverty of females cannot be attributed to their greater longevity, the gender differential in poverty-mortality well-being has nonetheless not deteriorated to the disadvantage of women in recent decades."     

Ambiguity and the value of information

The value of information is studied in a non-expected utility model of ambiguity with second-order probabilities. Information that reduces ambiguity has a positive value for ambiguity-averse decision makers, and the value of information that resolves ambiguity increases with greater ambiguity and with greater ambiguity aversion. Since information that resolves risk is valuable, and must also resolve ambiguity, the value of such information for ambiguity averters increases with greater ambiguity and with greater ambiguity aversion.