India-born immigrants in Australia and Canada: a comparison of selected characteristics

"This article examines the Indian component of Asian immigration to Canada and Australia, reviews briefly the historical background of Indian immigration, discusses the characteristics of India-born immigrants and explores their social impact upon both nations. A comparative approach is adopted to highlight similarities and differences." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Servant leadership

As corporations are eagerly pursuing reengineering and reorganization, leadership functions are changing to champion these efforts. Traditionally, organizations have had a "top-down" management approach, however, there is a gradual shift to other leadership models. Servant leadership is being successfully implemented in many settings. Servant leadership, first popularized by Robert Greenleaf in 1970, puts serving others as the number one priority. Ten characteristics of a servant leader include: Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. Both servant leadership and the chaos theory have in common the central tenet of relationships. Since America is now approximately 80 percent a "service-economy," servant leadership can greatly benefit the individual employees, as well as help to facilitate the organization's pursuit of its changing strategic plans.     

Markets,Networks, and Risk: An Analysis of Labor Remuneration in the Lake Victoria Fishing Industry

This study applies concepts from Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action to the problem of identifying the circumstances under which networks replace markets as the primary governance mechanism for economic activities. The suggestion derived from this theory is that markets govern economic activities tied to material phenomena; whereas networks control such activities when they are tied to social relationships. This suggestion is subjected to an empirical test. Labor transactions in the Lake Victoria fishing industry are used to test the hypothesis that risk factors arising from natural contingencies will distribute according to a risk market model, whereas those arising from social relationships will be distributed through a logic of social power tied to networks and identities. The hypothesis is generally supported by data on the effects of kinship and, more strongly, ethnicity.     

Being Volunteered? The Impact of Social Participation and Pro-Social Attitudes on Volunteering

While disagreeing over the reasons why the performance of civic obligations seems to be declining, conservatives and liberals agree that people need to be reminded of their duties as citizens for this decline to be halted. But do these exhortations work? This paper tests two theories about how people become volunteers. The “normativist” perspective assumes that volunteer behavior flows from socialization into pro-social attitudes; the “social practice” perspective stresses the formative role of practical experiences and social participation. Using a panel study of high school seniors who were reinterviewed in their mid-20s and again in their early 30s, we show that volunteer work undertaken in high school has long-term benefits as does social participation more generally but that socialization into pro-social attitudes has an even stronger influence on volunteering in middle age. The implications of our study are that mandatory community service programs can boost later volunteer efforts but that socialization into appropriate citizenship attitudes is of equal, if not greater, importance.

     

Putting the “Team” into Teamwork: Alternative Theoretical Contributions for Contemporary Management Practice

This paper establishes that teamwork is afunction of how team members perceive the team and theirrole in it. Social identity theory (Hogg & Abrams,1993; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987) offer explanations forthe cognitive, evaluative, and emotional processes whichmotivate individuals to join a social group and enhancetheir ability to contribute to the maximum of their ability, which would be desirable formany team tasks. Social identity theory posits that themotivation for thinking, feeling, and thus working as acohesive unit is socially constructed. Highly productive teamwork requires that team membersrecognize the team as a unit and as an attractive workarrangement. Fundamental assumptions of contemporarymanagement, and management research, are challenged to integrate social identityfindings.     

The exponentiation formula of reliability and survival: Does it always hold?

In reliability and biometry, it is common practice to choose a failure model by first assessing the failure rate function subjectively, and then invoking the well known exponentiation formula. The derivation of this formula is based on the assumption that the underlying failure distribution be absolutely continuous. Thus, implicit in the above approach is the understanding that the selected failure distribution will be absolutely continuous. The purpose of this note is to point out that the absolute continuity may fail when the failure rate is assessed conditionally, and in particular when it is conditioned on certain types of covariates, called internal covariates. When such is the case, the exponentiation formula should not be used.     

Obesity-related behaviors in adolescent friendship networks

This study examines obesity-related behaviors within adolescent friendship networks, because adolescent peers have been identified as being important determinants of many health behaviors. We applied ERGM selection models for single network observations to determine if close adolescent friends engage in similar behaviors and to explore associations between behavior and popularity. Same-sex friends were found to be similar on measures of organized physical activity in two out of three school-based friendship networks. Female friends were found to engage in similar screen-based behaviors, and male friends tended to be similar in their consumption of high-calorie foods. Popularity (receiving ties) was also associated with some behaviors, although these effects were gender specific and differed across networks.