Dynamic and Marketing Capabilities as Predictors of Social Enterprises’ Performance

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Social enterprises (SEs) have an increasingly important role in developing more equitable societies worldwide. The...     

Economic and Institutional Context and Second Births in Seven European Countries

The extent to which mothers progress to a second child varies greatly between European countries. Although both institutional and economic context are believed to be partly responsible for these differences, available research on economic conditions and fertility mostly focuses on first births and studies on family policy and fertility have hitherto insufficiently addressed population heterogeneity. Combining longitudinal microdata from the Harmonized Histories with contextual data on labour market uncertainty and family policy, this paper uses discrete-time hazard models to analyse the impact of economic and institutional context on second birth hazards of 22,298 women in 7 European countries between 1970 and 2002. Particular attention is paid to variation in the contextual effects by level of education. We find that aggregate-level unemployment and temporary employment reduce second birth hazards, particularly for low- and medium-level educated women. Family policies are positively related to second birth hazards. Whereas family allowances stimulate second births particularly among low educated mothers, the positive effect of childcare is invariant by level of education.     

‘Chinese-Mexicans’ and ‘Blackest Asians’: Filipino American youth resisting the racial binary

This study provides a deeper understanding of the interracial connections not just between non-whites and whites, but among non-whites. Filipino American youth attending high school in New York City contended with a dominant bipolar racial discourse that marginalizes the racialized experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders. However, instead of feeling invisible or marginalized, data point to how they negotiated a black–white racial discourse to decide when and how they enter dialogues about race. Filipino youth reconceptualized this racial binary to position themselves on a continuum to form the racial ‘middle ground’ between blacks and whites. Importantly, rather than a racial hierarchy that places whites at the top, youth used discursive strategies to place themselves on a racial continuum that emphasizes the interconnectedness among racial minorities.     

Human resource management and performance

The study of human resource management (HRM) has been invigorated by the promise that there is a best-practice, high-involvement management (HIM) that can guarantee superior organizational performance. None the less, there remain concerns that contingency theory still rules, that is, that the fit between the human resource systems and their context, and particularly the organization's business strategy, is all important and, thus, that HIM will only outperform other systems in certain circumstances. In the 1990s, there has been a spate of research that has sought to test whether HIM is indeed universally relevant. This paper reviews these studies. The paper first introduces the conceptual dimensions of the debate concerning HRM and performance. This shows that the issues go beyond a simple competition between universalism and contingency theory. There are more complicated hypotheses linking human resource practices beneath the surface of the recent literature. The second part of the paper overviews the studies in the light of these hypotheses, revealing that they present an uneven picture. Firstly, there are conceptual differences underlying the studies and, secondly, the results vary between them, and the effects of HIM vary between performance measures even in particular studies. Though a fair number of the studies claim to support universalism, their claims are not always unequivocally supported by their research evidence, and it is premature to conclude in its favour. If anything, there is more support for the 'lean production' argument that stresses the interaction effect between HIM and total quality management on performance.     

Spherical regression models with general covariates and anisotropic errors

Statistics and Computing - Existing parametric regression models in the literature for response data on the unit sphere assume that the covariates have particularly simple structure, for example...     

Risk Factors in Adolescence: The Case of Gambling, Videogame Playing, and the Internet

It has been noted that adolescents may be more susceptible to pathological gambling. Not only is it usually illegal, but it appears to be related to high levels of problem gambling and other delinquent activities such as illicit drug taking and alcohol abuse. This paper examines risk factors not only in adolescent gambling but also in videogame playing (which shares many similarities with gambling). There appear to be three main forms of adolescent gambling that have been widely researched. Adolescent gambling activities and general risk factors in adolescent gambling are provided. As well, the influence of technology on adolescents in the form of both videogames and the Internet are examined. It is argued that technologically advanced forms of gambling may be highly appealing to adolescents.     

PERT,CPM and the export process

PERT techniques logically arrange all related tasks involved in completing a major process. Tasks can be examined in relationship to each other and one can determine whether—and, if so, by how much—changes in the length of time to perform one task affect overall completion time. When applied to the export process, PERT techniques allow one to examine trade-offs between alternatives such as air and water shipping; and to calculate values of accelerating each task.