The Impact of Music on Childhood and Adolescent Achievement*

Objective. The study examines the association between music involvement and academic achievement in both childhood and adolescence using three measures of music participation: in school, outside of school, and parental involvement in the form of concert attendance. Methods. We review prior work pertaining to music's impact on achievement and then draw from two nationally representative data sources (ECLS‐K and NELS:88). Our analyses apply logistic and OLS regression techniques to assess patterns of music involvement and possible effects on math and reading performance for both elementary and high school students. Results. Music involvement varies quite systematically by class, and gender status, and such involvement holds implications for both math and reading achievement, and for young children and adolescents. Notably, associations with achievement persist in our modeling even when prior achievement levels are accounted for. Although music does mediate some student background effects, this mediation is only minimal. Conclusions. Music participation, both inside and outside of school, is associated with measures of academic achievement among children and adolescents. Future work should further delineate the relevant processes of music involvement, as well as how background inequalities and music involvement intersect in relation to educational performance.     

Entrepreneurial orientation and the business performance of SMEs: a quantitative study from the Netherlands

Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) is often mentioned as an antecedent of growth, competitive advantage and superior performance, and prior empirical research has often shown a positive relationship between EO and performance appears to exist. However, an important question that remains unanswered is what effect EO might have on firm performance during periods of economic crisis, and the severe environmental turbulence that accompany such crises. This research is a first investigation towards the effects of EO on the performance of small and medium sized firms during the current global economic crisis. In this study we use the multidimensional model of EO and test a series of hypotheses pertaining to its performance effects using survey data gathered from 164 Dutch SMEs. The present research shows that proactive firm behavior positively contributes to SME performance during the economic crisis. We further show that innovative SMEs do perform better in turbulent environments, but those innovative SMEs should minimize the level of risk and should take action to avoid projects that are too risky.     

COMPARISONS AND SELECTION OF TWO-PARAMETER EXPONENTIAL POPULATIONS

For two-parameter exponential populations with the same scale parameter (known or unknown) comparisons are made between the location parameters. This is done by constructing confidence intervals, which can then be used for selection procedures. Comparisons are made with a control, and with the (unknown) “best” or “worst” population. Emphasis is laid on finding approximations to the confidence so that calculations are simple and tables are not necessary. (Since we consider unequal sample sizes, tables for exact values would need to be extensive.)     

Approche socioclinique de la souffrance au travail1

Suffering at work has become a major social phenomena. This situation has many causes: high performance enhancement, urgency seen as an obligation, pressure for results, but also fear, and the soaring of ‘the battle for places’ (la lutte des places). The psychopathological consequences of pressure at work are now well known: breakdowns, professional exhaustion, work addiction, burnout, harassment. Stress has become an ordinary tool for management. Employees cannot find a meaning to this context, nor can they identify the causes of their ill being or the reasons for the violence they endure. They confront an opaque and paradoxical power. Looking for solutions to the contradictions to which management has given rise without resolving, they become responsible for those difficulties and guilty of their own suffering. These are ‘innocent violences’ in so far as they are justified by an indisputable system of management.     

Citizenship, poverty and the real will

The paper analyses the concept of citizenship in the work of Bernard and Helen Bosanquet against the backcloth of a broader intellectual and historical framework. The discussion then addresses three issues in relation to citizenship: class, markets and poverty. Each concept is introduced through the medium of T.H. Marshall's ideas on citizenship. Marshall's ideas are taken as broad markers for the discussion of the concept in the post 1945 era. The discussion of each concept is then analysed in relation to the Bosanquets’ theories. The basic conclusion is that many of the Bosanquets’ analyses and answers are both inappropriate and antique, however they do highlight certain intrinsic difficulties which are still very much part of twentieth century states.     

Corporate social responsibility: the organizational view

Designing strategies for corporate social responsibility (CSR)-practice nowadays has become essential for organizations. Notwithstanding, how organizations appear internally in a socially responsible context toward their employees has been insufficiently investigated. This study aims at ascertaining how Internal CSR can be conceptualized as well as how it affects employees’ commitment. To do so, the manifestations of Internal CSR are discussed based on social identity theory and further literature, while the developed research model is checked for suitability through a survey generating 2081 employee responses from an international pharmaceutical company. As one result, it can be stated that the factors proposed to constitute Internal CSR are confirmed. Further, the findings entail the following conclusions: Internal CSR has a notable influence on employees’ Affective Organizational Commitment whilst relatively moderate impacting Normative Organizational Commitment. Additionally, Affective Organizational Commitment adopts a mediating function regarding Normative Organizational Commitment.     

Race to idle or not: balancing the memory sleep time with DVS for energy minimization

Reducing energy consumption is a critical problem in most of the computing systems today. Among all the computing system components, processor and memory are two significant energy consumers. Dynamic voltage scaling is typically applied to reduce processor energy while sleep mode is usually injected to trim memory’s leakage energy. However, in the memory architecture with multiple cores sharing memory, in order to optimize the system-wide energy, these two classic techniques are difficult to be directly combined due to the complicated interactions. In this work, we explore the coordination of the multiple cores and the memory, and present systematic analysis for minimizing the system-wide energy based on different system models and task models. For tasks with common release time, optimal schemes are presented for the systems both with and without considering the static power of the cores. For agreeable deadline tasks, different dynamic programming-based optimal solutions are proposed for negligible and non-negligible static power of cores. For the general task model, this paper proposes a heuristic online algorithm. Furthermore, the scheme is extended to handle the problem when the transition overhead between the active and sleep modes is considered. The optimality of the proposed schemes for common release time and agreeable deadline tasks are proved. The validity of the proposed heuristic scheme is evaluated through experiments. Experimental results confirm the superiority of the heuristic scheme in terms of the energy saving improvement compared to the most related existing work.     

The contribution of network research to managerial culture and practice

Although research on social networks has gained significant influence in the academic world, several factors seem to have lowered its echo in the business world. It is still unclear how this fast-growing stream of research has translated into solid implications for managerial action and decision making. Based on a review of recent research, this paper attempts to provide evidence that network research does have practical relevance. We focus on five areas where network research has introduced new angles and renewed the understanding of how organizations should tackle management issues. We also suggest directions for future research, with the same objective of placing the emphasis on strengthening the contribution of the approach to management practices.     

Firm‐level Evidence on Gender Wage Discrimination in the Belgian Private Economy

In this paper we explore a matched employer–employee data set to investigate the presence of gender wage discrimination in the Belgian private economy labour market. Contrary to many existing papers, we analyse gender wage discrimination using an independent productivity measure. Using firm‐level data, we are able to compare direct estimates of a gender productivity differential with those of a gender wage differential. We take advantage of the panel structure to identify gender‐related differences from within‐firm variation. Moreover, inspired by recent developments in the production function estimation literature, we address the problem of endogeneity of the gender mix using a structural production function estimator alongside instrumental variable‐general method of moments (IV‐GMM) methods where lagged value of labour inputs are used as instruments. Our results suggest that there is no gender wage discrimination inside private firms located in Belgium, on the contrary.     

Success factors of management consulting

Management consulting as a service has become part of almost every medium to big company’s daily business. Despite management consulting’s high practical relevance the scientific discussion of this discipline is relatively young and needs to advance. Notably, there is little empirical research that focuses on the conceptualization and operationalization of management consulting’s success factors from a client perspective. Therefore, in this article we theoretically conceptualize and subsequently operationalize critical success factors of management consulting. Also, we examine those factors’ particular impact on management consulting success. Based on a survey of 255 companies and structural equation modeling, we show that six out of seven theoretically derived success factors have a significant positive effect on management consulting success. In particular, Consultant Expertise, Intensity of Collaboration and Common Vision have a strong impact on the performance of management consulting.