Using Service‐Customer Matrices in Strategic Analysis of Nonprofits

This article demonstrates the value of service‐customer matrices (SCMs) for managers performing strategic analysis of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Some of the benefits of using SCMs are understanding the portfolio of businesses; clarifying what sponsors and clients value; identifying rivals, key attributes, and revenues on a service‐customer segment basis; and understanding and formulating positioning strategy.     

'Anything you can do, tu can do better': tu and vous as substitutes for indefinite on in French

Research on Montreal French (Laberge and Sankoff 1979; Thibault 1991) has shown a spectacular rise in the use of indefinite tu (or vous ) in recent decades, at the expense of the standard form on . Although grammars of French have traditionally passed over indefinite tu / vous in silence, Ashby's study of Tours French (1992) confirmed that the phenomenon exists in metropolitan French also. The historical time-depth of indefinite tu/ vous has apparently not been explored previously, though Posner (1997) has suggested that indefinite tu is a modern feature, found especially in Canada. A survey of indefinite tu / vous in earlier periods and in a range of varieties forms the first part of this paper. Secondly, drawing on a corpus of French spoken in Picardy, northern France, the paper investigates the extent to which this use of the 2nd person pronouns: (i) helps to avoid ambiguity; (ii) co-occurs with another grammatical variable. Unlike the surveys of Montreal and Tours, the Picardy corpus includes a large majority of informants who used tu to address the interviewer, and this too is explored as a potential influence on speakers' use of 2nd person pronouns with indefinite reference.     

Relationship satisfaction,attachment, and nonverbal accuracy in early marriage

This study explored the relations between nonverbal accuracy, relationship satisfaction, and adult attachment in early marriage. Thirty-three couples were assessed at three points in time across the first two years of marriage. On all three occasions, they engaged in an encoding and decoding task using the standard content paradigm (Kahn, 1970) and completed the Quality Marriage Index (Norton, 1983). At Times 2 and 3 subjects also completed a measure of adult attachment which provided scores on Comfort with closeness and Anxiety over abandonment. Nonverbal accuracy increased over time for all message types and husbands were more accurate than wives at decoding positive messages. Accuracy did not predict later relationship satisfaction, but satisfaction predicted later accuracy, mainly for. husbands. Attachment dimensions also predicted later accuracy, with Anxiety over abandonment being more related to accuracy for husbands, and Comfort with closeness being more related to accuracy for wives. There was evidence of increased communication awareness over time for encoders, particularly in terms of the accuracy with which they predicted their spouses' decoding. In addition, husbands and those high in relationship satisfaction were more likely to expect their partners to decode their communications correctly. With regard to communication awareness for decoders, the main finding was that all groups except wives in unhappy marriages were more confident on correct than incorrect messages.     

How Long Do We Live?

Period life expectancy is calculated from age‐specific death rates using life table methods that are among the oldest and most widely employed tools of demography. These methods are rarely questioned, much less criticized. Yet changing age patterns of adult mortality in countries with high life expectancy provide a basis for questioning the conventional use of life tables. This article argues that when the mean age at death is rising, period life expectancy at birth as conventionally calculated overestimates life expectancy. Estimates of this upward bias, ranging from 1.6 years for the United States and Sweden to 3.3 years for Japan for 1980–95, are presented. A similar bias in the opposite direction occurs when mean age at death is falling. These biases can also distort trends in life expectancy as conventionally calculated and may affect projected future trends in period life expectation, particularly in the short run.     

Fertility decline in Taiwan: A study using parity progression ratios

Taiwan's decline in fertility is studied by using period parity progression ratios. Levels of marriage and motherhood are found to have been high and essentially constant though the late 1980s, suggesting that the decline has been due almost entirely to declines in second and higher order-births. Families with three or more children play an important role in maintaining the current level of fertility. The level of fertility would be even lower without these families. They contributed more than one-half child per woman to the total fertility rate during most of the 1980s. Total fertility rates computed from the period parity progression ratios indicate a substantially higher level of fertility than the conventional total fertility rate; they remained above or at replacement level through 1988. A formal demographic analysis suggests that the conventional total fertility rate has been depressed by shifts in age at childbearing.     

‘She was like a mother and a father to me’: searching for the ideal mentor for youth in care

Recent studies of youth in out‐of‐home placements have indicated that a successful mentoring relationship in care is associated with better emotional, educational and behavioural outcomes in adulthood. The goal of this exploratory qualitative study is to describe the profile of a staff member who is able to establish a meaningful relationship with youth in care through the perspectives of 20 young adults aged 21–26 who left care in Israel. Findings revealed that the staff member who formed meaningful relationships with youth was the staff member who was available to the youth and familiar with their personal backgrounds, who was able to see them as positive and trustworthy and to provide guidance and support from a non‐judgmental approach. One of the study's conclusions is that staff members who were able to transform their connection with the youth into mentoring relationships were those who were able to make the youth feel as if they were the staff member's own children, and as a result feel cared for deeply and loved. The discussion addresses the barriers in forming a mentoring relationship with a formal professional and the ways to utilize these mentoring relationship components more effectively within the care system.     

Factors Attracting Individuals to Nonprofit Management over Public and Private Sector Management

Little research has sought to identify the distinct advantages that nonprofits offer employees, particularly managers. Drawing upon Weisbrod's theory of managerial sorting (1988), we test a series of hypotheses about the differences among nonprofit, public, and for‐profit organizations that may explain the preference of managers to work in one sector over the other. We use pooled cross‐sectional data from the General Social Survey to test managerial sorting. We find many similarities in the perceptions of managers in the nonprofit and public sectors as compared to the for‐profit sector. However, when we examine the sorting of managers into nonprofit versus public sector jobs, we find differences in work environment. Compared to those working in the public sector, managers in nonprofits report greater freedom in deciding how to carry out their job functions, more control over their work schedules, and greater opportunities for pay increases. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the practice of nonprofit management.     

New Estimates and Projections of Population Growth in Pakistan

Pakistan's population growth rate rose steadily from about 2.6 percent per annum in the early 1960s to a high of about 3.5 percent during the late 1980s. Since then it has declined to an estimated 2.1 percent for 2003. Growth rates calculated from the population censuses, which show a very different picture, are distorted by differential accuracy of enumeration. During the period of rising growth rates, fertility was constant at just under 7 children per woman while life expectancy at birth rose by nearly 20 years. Fertility decline began in the late 1980s, bringing the population growth rate down with it. Remarkably, there appears to have been little change in life expectancy over the past 15 years.     

Period Parity Progression Measures of Fertility in China

Parity progression measures are uniquely suited to the study of fertility in China, because Chinese policies and programmes focus so closely on parity and birth order. In this paper we present period parity progression ratios for China and its urban and rural areas for the years 1955–81, using the birth history data from the one-per-thousand fertility survey of 1982. Our period parity progression ratios differ from those introduced by Henry in that they provide an overall level of fertility which may be compared with measures based on age-specific birth rates. We compare the two measures empirically for China, finding both similarities and divergences, and then analyse the relation between them. It is suggested that, where fertility is low and fluctuating, as in China, the parity-progression-based measures provide a substantially truer picture of fertility levels and trends than do age-based measures.