Beyond demand-control: Emotional labour and symptoms of burnout in teachers

Teaching is a profession that involves a high level of emotional labour. This includes such behaviours as surface acting (displaying an emotion that is not actually felt), deep acting (the activity undertaken to actually feel a required emotion), and suppression of emotion. In many professions, this emotional labour is thought to be related to high levels of burnout. The aim of our study was to show that emotional labour has a unique relationship with burnout that is separate from its relationship with the variables of the Demand Control Support (DCS) model. Emotional labour was studied, together with the variables of the Karasek Job Demand Control Support model, in a random sample of 365 mathematics teachers in the Netherlands. We used the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (D-QEL) that measures: (1) surface acting, (2) deep acting, (3) suppression, and (4) emotional consonance. In line with other studies, job characteristics were found to be specifically related to emotional exhaustion. Surface acting was significantly related to depersonalization, and emotional consonance (the absence of emotional labour) was related to personal accomplishment. We conclude that whereas the DCS model has been valuable for understanding emotional exhaustion, emotional labour provides an additional perspective for understanding work stress.     

The contribution of the clean development mechanism to national climate policies

The clean development mechanism (CDM), one of the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, has not received noticeable attention in the applied modeling literature. In this paper we develop a policy-oriented trading model explicitly including the key features likely to influence the supply and demand of CDM projects. This model allows us to evaluate the contribution of the CDM to climate policies at the national level. With an application to Belgium we show that the CDM could reduce the cost of the Kyoto Protocol by a factor 10. Policy analyses reveal that some features (e.g. the market share) have much more influence on this result than others (notably the transaction costs). Moreover, equilibrium effects can sometimes exceed direct effects so that, all in all, a larger domestic abatement could be justified by the desire to reduce what we call carbon dependence. Policy implications and perspectives for the CDM are discussed.     

The Impact of Forced Migration on Marital Life in Chad

Civil war in Chad in the 1990shad a major impact on the family life of large numbers of people who were internally displaced or sought refuge in exile. This article examines the effect of these forced migrations on marriage, in particular the transition from monogamy to divorce or bigamy. It analyses data collected in N'Djamena in 1993–1994. The higher risk of divorce among internally displaced persons compared to that of refugees suggests that they were more vulnerable from a demographic perspective, and that their marital survival strategies may have been less successful. It is suggested that aid agencies should increase assistance given to internally displaced people because they are more at risk. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

30+ years of research and practice of outsourcing – Exploring the past and anticipating the future

Outsourcing is a phenomenon that as a practice originated in the 1950s, but it was not until the 1980s when the strategy became widely adopted in organizations. Since then, the strategy has evolved from a strictly cost focused approach towards more cooperative nature, in which cost is only one, often secondary, decision-making criterion. In the development of the strategy, three broad and somewhat overlapping, yet distinct phases can be identified: the era of the Big Bang, the era of the Bandwagon, and the era of Barrierless Organizations. This paper illustrates that the evolution of the practice has caused several contradictions among researchers, as well as led to the situation where the theoretical background of the phenomenon has recently become much richer. Through examining existing research, this paper intends to identify the development of outsourcing strategy from a practical as well as a theoretical perspective from its birth up to today. In addition, through providing insights from managers in the information technology industry, this paper aims at providing a glimpse from the future – that is – what may be the future directions and research issues in this complex phenomenon?     

Simple estimation of the mode of a multivariate density

The authors consider an estimate of the mode of a multivariate probability density using a kernel estimate drawn from a random sample. The estimate is defined by maximizing the kernel estimate over the set of sample values. The authors show that this estimate is strongly consistent and give an almost sure rate of convergence. This rate depends on the sharpness of the density near the true mode, which is measured by a peak index.     

Quasi Most Powerful Invariant Goodness-of-fit Tests

ABSTRACT.  In this paper, we develop an approximation for the most powerful invariant test of one location-scale family against another one. The approach is based on the Laplace method for integrals and yields a very accurate approximation of the density of a maximal invariant. Moreover, it can be applied to a much wider set of pairs of densities than previously possible. Many examples are worked out. The resulting test is easy to compute and its power is shown to be very close to that of the best test. By using versions of the Laplace method, the approach is extended to goodness-of-fit tests for residuals in regression and to some multivariate distributions. A small simulation study confirms the theoretical results. An example concludes the paper.     

Estimation of long-memory parameters for seasonal fractional ARIMA with stable innovations

We carry out finite sample size parameter estimation methods for long-memory parameters of the class of seasonal fractional ARIMA with stable innovations. In particular, we consider the semiparametric method studied in Reisen et al. (2006) [27] and two Whittle approaches: the classical Whittle method and a method based on a Markov Chains Monte Carlo (MCMC) procedure. The performance of the methods is discussed using a Monte Carlo simulation.     

Social class variation in risk: a comparative analysis of the dynamics of economic vulnerability1

A joint concern with multidimensionality and dynamics is a defining feature of the pervasive use of the terminology of social exclusion in the European Union. The notion of social exclusion focuses attention on economic vulnerability in the sense of exposure to risk and uncertainty. Sociological concern with these issues has been associated with the thesis that risk and uncertainty have become more pervasive and extend substantially beyond the working class. This paper combines features of recent approaches to statistical modelling of poverty dynamics and multidimensional deprivation in order to develop our understanding of the dynamics of economic vulnerability. An analysis involving nine countries and covering the first five waves of the European Community Household Panel shows that, across nations and time, it is possible to identify an economically vulnerable class. This class is characterized by heightened risk of falling below a critical resource level, exposure to material deprivation and experience of subjective economic stress. Cross‐national differentials in persistence of vulnerability are wider than in the case of income poverty and less affected by measurement error. Economic vulnerability profiles vary across welfare regimes in a manner broadly consistent with our expectations. Variation in the impact of social class within and across countries provides no support for the argument that its role in structuring such risk has become much less important. Our findings suggest that it is possible to accept the importance of the emergence of new forms of social risk and acknowledge the significance of efforts to develop welfare states policies involving a shift of opportunities and decision making on to individuals without accepting the ‘death of social class’ thesis.