Zest for work? Assessment of enthusiasm and satisfaction with the present work situation and health--a 1.5-year follow-up study

The aim of the study was to investigate whether assessing zest for work is a valuable approach in occupational health work. The term "zest for work" comes from the expression "zest for life" and can roughly be interpreted as the degree of enthusiasm and satisfaction with the present work situation. The measurements comprise three components: listing important factors for the feeling of zest for work, attitude rating and stating whether it is possible to have any influence over the listed factors. Included in this study were 5539 employees, mainly women. Low zest for work was associated with job strain and insufficient social support and imposed an increased risk for poor health for working and long spells of sick leave. The results support that assessing zest for work can be useful in occupational health work.     

Brother correlations in earnings in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden compared to the United States

The correlation in economic status among siblings is a useful “omnibus measure” of the overall impact of family and community factors on adult economic status. In this study we compare brother correlations in long-run (permanent) earnings between the United States, on one hand, and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) on the other. Our base case results, based on very similar sample criteria and definitions for all countries, show that this correlation is above 0.40 in the United States and in the range 0.14–0.26 in the Nordic countries. Even though these results turn out to be somewhat sensitive to some assumptions that have to be made, we conclude that the family and community factors are more important determinants of long-run earnings in the United States than in the Nordic countries. Received: 27 July 2000/Accepted: 7 March 2001 All correspondence to: Anders Bj?rklund. Comments from two referees, conference participants at ESPE2000 and the Canadian Employment Research Forum, seminar participants in Aarhus, Uppsala, Bonn, and Stockholm are gratefully acknowledged. We thank NOS-S for financial support. The Swedish data collection was also supported by HSFR and SFR. The Finnish data were obtained with support from the Yrj? Jahnsson Foundation. We thank Tom Erik Aab? for preparing the Norwegian data, and Esben Agerbo for computational assistance with the Danish data. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Ethnic Groups in Urban Education

The concept of urban education is seen as education conducted under certain conditions and in a particular environment—for example, in inner city areas where immigrant groups have settled. Greek children in State schools in the inner city of Sydney serve as an example. It is suggested that for the local Australian pupils, and for those for whom English is a second language, school entry marks the beginning of their alienation process. Home and school value systems are at variance. The needs of the local Australian group and those of the immigrants are totally separate and disparate. Implications for an effective balance of home and school demands are discussed.     

Regional Mortality Disparities in Germany

While regional mortality inequalities in Germany tend to be relatively stable in the short run, over the course of the past century marked changes have occurred in the country’s regional mortality patterns. These changes include not only the re-emergence of stark differences between eastern and western Germany after 1970, which have almost disappeared again in the decades after the reunification of Germany in 1990; but also substantial changes in the disparities between northern and southern Germany. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the northern regions in Germany had the highest life expectancy levels, while the southern regions had the lowest. Today, this mortality pattern is reversed. In this paper, we study these long-term trends in spatial mortality disparities in Germany since 1910, and link them with theoretical considerations and existing research on the possible determinants of these patterns. Our findings support the view that the factors which contributed to shape spatial mortality variation have changed substantially over time, and suggest that the link between regional socioeconomic conditions and recorded mortality levels strengthened over the last 100 years.     

Dreams and aspirations of mobile young Aboriginal Australian people

This article explores the dreams and aspirations of mobile young Aboriginal Australian people aged between 13 and 25 years, who move in, out and through remote, regional and urban locations. Considering dreams and aspirations in the context of cultural difference is the central focus of this article, which uses a critical and deconstructive approach to the Eurocentric conceptualisation of youth policy terminology in Australia. Participatory and ethnographic techniques were used for this research study which engaged directly with mobile young Aboriginal Australian people. Through exploring the dreams and aspirations of this cohort of participants, this study challenges popular stereotypes depicting young Aboriginal Australian people as delinquent and disengaged. All young participants in this study expressed the dream of wanting to contribute positively to society. Aspirations for the future were expressed and formed by a set of values which were found not to reflect dominant cultural assumptions of successful transitions into adulthood.     

The Impact of Alliance Management Capabilities on Alliance Attributes and Performance: A Literature Review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter‐firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) – firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge – as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner‐specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge‐sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.     

Optimal PPS Sampling with Vanishing Auxiliary Variables – with Applications in Microscopy

Recently, non‐uniform sampling has been suggested in microscopy to increase efficiency. More precisely, proportional to size (PPS) sampling has been introduced, where the probability of sampling a unit in the population is proportional to the value of an auxiliary variable. In the microscopy application, the sampling units are fields of view, and the auxiliary variables are easily observed approximations to the variables of interest. Unfortunately, often some auxiliary variables vanish, that is, are zero‐valued. Consequently, part of the population is inaccessible in PPS sampling. We propose a modification of the design based on a stratification idea, for which an optimal solution can be found, using a model‐assisted approach. The new optimal design also applies to the case where ‘vanish’ refers to missing auxiliary variables and has independent interest in sampling theory. We verify robustness of the new approach by numerical results, and we use real data to illustrate the applicability.