How to govern business services exchanges: Contractual and relational issues

With firms concentrating on core competencies, more emphasis has been placed on outsourcing and dealing with external sourcing agents. This has led to a stronger academic focus on buyer–seller exchanges and the corresponding mechanisms for governing these exchanges. This paper gives an overview of previous research investigating the exchange governance phenomenon based on transaction cost theory or co‐operative interorganizational relationships. The results reveal that few research studies have investigated the overall picture of exchange governance, including both contractual and relational governance and taking into account antecedents as well as performance outcomes of the governance mechanisms involved. Moreover, despite the service‐dominant logic shift, limited attention is given to specific service characteristics and their impact on exchange governance. This paper attempts to meld economic and social related antecedents into a model with regard to exchange governance in business services settings. Contractual and relational governance issues and their impact on performance outcomes are also considered. The resulting model indicates that to govern business services exchanges efficiently, more emphasis should be placed on behavioral uncertainty, human and process asset specificity and contractual governance. The paper concludes by discussing several directions for future research.     

The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies

Muuri A. The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 182–193 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article investigates the attitudes of citizens and clients to social welfare services and social security benefits. The data come from a Finnish national survey conducted at the end of 2006. First, the article overviews the previous welfare‐state studies relating especially to the theoretical perspectives of self‐interest and legitimacy. The empirical analysis indicates (i) that a different operation of self‐interest can only weakly explain the differences in attitudes between services and benefits; (ii) that there is general support for Finnish social welfare services and social security benefits, which, however, is mixed with growing criticism among women and pensioners who are supposed to benefit most from the welfare policies; and (iii) that such determinants of attitude as gender, use and, to some extent, lifecycle have become as important as class‐related factors such as income and education.     

The Value Relevance of Fair Value

This paper investigates the value relevance of revalued tangible assets and its variation depending on industry, size of the firm and age of revalued amounts. It examines the reaction of investors on the Romanian market, a developing market, in the period of economic growth between 2003 and 2007, before Romania’s adherence to the European Union. Also, it suggests a model which allows for the comparative analysis of the influence over share price attributed to two equity growth sources: revaluation reserves and operational profit. The findings confirm the central hypothesis of the study—revaluated amounts of tangible assets are value relevant—and verify the predictive and feedback value, timeliness, reliability, and the possibilities for fair value implementation, characteristics which have been selected for testing. However, the results are less consistent than the outcome of the variable which reflects the equity growth due to profit, which leads to a moderate value relevance of fair value in the case of revaluated tangible assets. The value relevance analysis on clusters verifies the established hypotheses regarding the superiority of value relevance for the manufacturing sector as opposed to the service sector and of revaluations older than 2 years compared to more recent revaluations. The hypothesis regarding higher value relevance of revaluated amounts disclosed by large firms compared to SMEs is not confirmed, as only the latter presented significant statistical values.     

Unpolitical solutionism: Wealth elite sentiments against democracy and politics

The last few decades have been marked by discourses that challenge many basic presumptions supporting liberal democracy. Populist parties in particular have raised criticism against democratic systems, and authoritarian programmes have made electoral gains. This article offers the elite's perspective on this phenomenon, which is often discussed in the context of lower income groups. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 90 Finnish top earners, the article shows how wealth elites sustain strong discontent towards liberal democracy and see it as an ineffective and sometimes fundamentally flawed system. They are concerned with its alleged (in)efficiency and disagreements typical of democratic processes and are correspondingly fascinated by solutions that are presented as self-evident but that no one has the courage to execute. In this article, we refer to this type of reasoning by introducing and developing the term unpolitical solutionism, which refers to a preoccupation with quick solutions to complex problems that are political in nature. The concept of unpolitical solutionism builds on discussions of unpolitical democracy (Urbinati) and technosolutionism (Morozov) and brings them to our dialog. By analysing wealth elites' views in a Nordic democracy and by developing the concept of unpolitical solutionism, this article contributes to recent discussions on different forms of unpolitical argumentation in the context of (liberal) economic thinking.     

Older Adults and Emerging Digital Service Delivery: A Mixed Methods Study on Information and Communications Technology Use,Skills, and Attitudes

Based on data from a survey (n = 3291) and 14 qualitative interviews among Danish older adults, this study investigated the use of, and attitudes toward, information communications technology (ICT) and the digital delivery of public services. While age, gender, and socioeconomic status were associated with use of ICT, these determinants lost their explanatory power when we controlled for attitudes and experiences. We identified three segments that differed in their use of ICT and attitudes toward digital service delivery. As nonuse of ICT often results from the lack of willingness to use it rather than from material or cognitive deficiencies, policy measures for bridging the digital divide should focus on skills and confidence rather than on access or ability.     

Local principal differential analysis: Graphical methods for functional data with covariates

We focus on principal differential analysis (PDA) of functional data for obtaining a low-dimensional representation of a collection of curves. PDA assumes there exists a linear differential operator that results in the zero-function when it is applied to each of the data curves, or equivalently, that the curves belong to a low-dimensional subspace of a normed linear space. PDA sets out to estimate this linear differential operator from the data and proceeds from there. Our contribution is to explain how subject covariates can be incorporated into a PDA analysis for graphical exploration of patterns in the data.     

Excessive Gambling and Online Gambling Communities

The Internet provides an accessible context for online gambling and gambling-related online communities, such as discussion forums for gamblers. These communities may be particularly attractive to young gamblers who are active Internet users. The aim of this study was to examine the use of gambling-related online communities and their relevance to excessive gambling among 15–25-year-old Finnish Internet users (N?=?1200). Excessive gambling was assessed by using the South Oaks Gambling Screen. Respondents were asked in a survey about their use of various kinds of gambling-related online communities, and sociodemographic and behavioral factors were adjusted. The results of the study revealed that over half (54.33%) of respondents who had visited gambling-related online communities were either at-risk gamblers or probable pathological gamblers. Discussion in these communities was mainly based on sharing gambling tips and experiences, and very few respondents said that they related to gambling problems and recovery. In three different regression models, visiting gambling-related online communities was a significant predictor for excessive gambling (with 95% confidence level) even after adjusting confounding factors. The association of visiting such sites was even stronger among probable pathological gamblers than among at-risk gamblers. Health professionals working with young people should be aware of the role of online communities in terms of development and persistence of excessive gambling. Monitoring the use of online gambling communities as well as utilizing recovery-oriented support both offline and online would be important in preventing further problems. Gambling platforms should also include warnings about excessive gambling and provide links to helpful sources.     

‘For the sake of the family and future’: the linked lives of highly skilled Indian migrants

ABSTRACT

While in Western literature, migration is generally considered an individual or (nuclear) household phenomenon, Indian context adds the strong presence of parents and extended family to the constellation. This paper addresses how significant others shape the life course events and the migration trajectories of highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands and UK. We employ a qualitative approach to the life course framework to highlight the linked lives that can alter the migration decisions. Our findings are drawn from 47 semi-structured biographic interviews. The results underscore how further migration decisions are often informed by the implications of the different life stages of the linked lives, the key elements being care-giving by and for the parents. Furthermore, we also illustrate how migration provides space for negotiating social norms and expectations: due to the geographical distance between migrants and their parents, the local (non-Indian) context plays a bigger role and thus the need for and timing of conformity with norms can be postponed. The understanding of family life in transnational settings will be enriched when individuals are embedded within the cultural background and linked lives are extended beyond the immediate nuclear family.     

Environmental and crown related factors affecting street tree transpiration in Helsinki,Finland

We investigated the drivers of street tree transpiration in boreal conditions, in order to better understand tree water use in the context of urban tree planning and stormwater management. Two streets built in Helsinki in 2002, hemiboreal zone that had been planted either with Tilia?×?vulgaris or Alnus glutinosa f. pyramidalis were used as the study sites. Tree water use was measured from sap flow over the 2008–2011 period by the heat dissipation method. Penman-Monteith based evapotranspiration models of increasing complexity were tested against the tree water use measurements to assess the role of environmental and tree related factors in tree transpiration. Alnus and Tilia respectively used 1.1 and 0.8 l of water per m² of leaf area per day under ample water conditions, but the annual variation was high. The Penman-Monteith evapotranspiration estimate and soil water status changes explained over 80 % of the variation in tree transpiration when the model was parameterized annually. The addition of tree crown surface area in the model improved its accuracy and diminished variation between years and sites. Using single parameterization over all four years instead of annually varying one did not produce reliable estimates of tree transpiration. Tree transpiration, scaled to different canopy cover percentages, implied that the columnar Alnus trees could transpire as much as all annual rainfall at or less than 50 % canopy cover.