The Role of Internal and External Complexity in Global Factory Performance: An NKC Application

The global factory literature suggests that MNCs can take advantage of global operations by extensively offshoring and outsourcing activities. However, the added difficulty for the lead firm to coordinate the resulting complex structure is often underestimated. Evidence could be found in Boeing's 787 Dreamliner project, in which the external complexity disrupted MNC performance. Motivated by the gap between theory and practice, this study focuses on systems of MNCs connected with each other with supplier-client relationships and/or outsourcing. In particular it investigates the interplay of the internal and external complexity in such systems and how their balance affects the system performance. The study models the internal and external complexity by using the NKC-simulation methodology and adjusting it to the specific MNC context. The NKC methodology is widely used in organization theory to study complex systems. Simulations comparing the performance of MNCs that use outsourcing to different degrees indicate that a balanced level of internal and external complexity is beneficial in the context of global factory.     

The Role of Family Behaviors in Determining Income Distribution: The Case of South Korea

In this article, we examined what has contributed to the worsening income inequality and poverty between 1996 and 2011 in South Korea. We used a rank-preserving exchange method and a conditional reweighting method to assess the roles of family behaviors—including female labor force participation and family structure—characteristics of household heads, and men’s earnings. The results showed that the change in men’s earnings was a dominant factor in accounting for the increasing income inequality and poverty. The change in age and education among household heads also contributed significantly to the worsening income distribution. The change in family structure mainly affected the income disparity among lower-income families and increased poverty. The rise in women’s labor force participation improved the income distribution but not considerably. The distributional roles of family have not worked to prevent or reverse the worsening income distribution in the past few decades in South Korea.     

Occupational closure and immigrant entrepreneurship: Russian Jews in Israel

The recent wave of Jews emigrating from countries of the former Soviet Union to Israel has created structural conditions for immigrant entrepreneurship. The large size of the migrant population and its spatial concentration create a demand for services and products that can be provided by immigrants. This paper investigates the factors associated with intentions to open a small business in a sample of Jewish immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet Union. It was found that intentions to open a small business are related to previous business experience, education, income, and length of residence in the country. Immigrants become interested in entrepreneurship after learning that their prospects of finding a job in their profession are meager and explain their motivation to open a small business as being to increase their income. The findings seem to support the disadvantage theory that conceptualizes entrepreneurship as an adaptive mechanism to structural barriers in the primary labor market that create an occupational closure for immigrants possessing low and middle levels of education and income.     

Population and pavement: population growth and land development in Israel

This research examines land use change in Israel––an intriguing but understudied setting with regard to population–environment dynamics. While Israel is fairly unique with regard to its combined high levels of economic prosperity and high population growth, this case study has relevance for developed countries and regions (like the south and southwest regions of the USA) which must balance population growth and urban development with open space conservation for ecosystem services and biological diversity. The population–land development relationship is investigated during the period from 1961 to 1995 at three spatial scales: national, regional (six districts), and local (40 localities). There is a positive correlation between population growth and land development rates at the national scale, and while remaining positive, the strength of the relationship varies greatly at regional and local scales. The variation in population–land use dynamics across scales is used to garner insight as to the importance of geography, policy and historical settlement patterns.     

Physician Migration in the Global South between Cuba and South Africa

Transnational physician migration has concerned states' health and migration policies for many years. Recent developments have increased attention to the outcomes of these flows in the global south, where physician emigration is undermining public health policies. Cuba's exporting of medical professionals presents an alternative dynamic, based upon both an ideology of humanitarian solidarity and a need to secure hard currency earnings. The benefits and challenges arising from a bilateral agreement between Cuba and South Africa to supply Cuban doctors to South Africa and training at the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) for South African medical students are addressed. The benefits of skills enhancement and professional development are noted, as well as the economic benefits for both the Cuban government and individual doctors, while concerns with the appropriateness of the medical training provided at ELAM for the South African health context and the sustainability of the current policy are discussed.

Policy Implications

• Strategic bi‐lateral agreements offer a productive route towards more sustainable management of skilled migration.
• When migration agreements include skills training, attention is needed to ensure the training provided is appropriate to the destination context: attention needs to be paid to the appropriateness of the medical training afforded to South African medical students in Cuba for health requirements in South Africa.
• International migration agreements can form part of a broader policy suite aimed at realizing public health and other development priorities. However, attention must be paid to the suitability and sustainability of the outcomes of these practices.

     

Kontexteffekte in Familien – Angleichung von Paaren und intergenerationale Transmission am Beispiel Religiosität

The present contribution shows conceptual and methodological approaches for the study of social context effects within families. Family members mutually constitute the social context in which family behavior and personality development take place. Social influence in families becomes evident empirically in family members’ significant similarity concerning a wide variety of characteristics. The present study focuses on intrafamily convergence with regard to religiousness. In an empirical illustration, both (a) horizontal intracouple alignment and (b) vertical intergenerational transmission processes are examined. Besides the finding that experiences during religious socialization in the parental home have a stronger impact than partner influences in adulthood, our analyses show that social context effects are more pronounced the stronger the cohesion of the respective interaction dyad is (e.g., according to measures of relationship quality).     

The Virtues of Participation without Power: Campaigns,Party Networks,and the Ends of Politics

Following Francesca Polletta's call to reconsider participatory democracy in a new millennium, this article analyzes and makes a normative case for institutional and partisan forms of participation without decision making. I draw on field research and interviews conducted over the last decade on Democratic Party campaigns to argue against contemporary denunciations of partisanship and critiques of institutional participation by radical democrats. First, this article discusses the opportunities available for citizens to participate in electoral politics. Volunteering is often limited to fund‐raising and instrumental voter contacts given the constraints of electoral institutions. Although campaign volunteerism is a fundamentally limited form of civic engagement, institutional and partisan participation has democratic value. Campaigns are institutionally linked to political parties that offer distinct moral, ideological, and policy choices to citizens. Recent analytical and empirical work shows that contemporary political parties are constituted by relatively coherent networks of civil society and social movement organizations that devote considerable resources to electoral politics to shape primary and general election outcomes and advance their agendas in governance. This reveals electoral participation to be tightly linked to larger partisan dynamics and institutional sites of power.     

“Don’t Argue with the Members”

Mel Pollner regularly cautioned researchers not to argue with the members of settings under consideration. He warned against substituting the researcher’s meaning for the meanings of those being studied. This article discusses facets of the caution as they relate to the research process. Seemingly simple, the tenet is nuanced in application. The article adds to the nuance by distinguishing what is called the “replacement” of meaning with the “displacement” of meaning, providing a way of understanding what members could mean if the contexts and settings of their accounts were taken into consideration.     

“I'm Not Supporting His Kids”: Nonresident Fathers' Contributions Given Mothers' New Fertility

The authors examined whether nonresident fathers provide informal support to their children and whether support stops if their ex‐partner goes on to have a child with a new man. A logistic regression analysis of longitudinal survey and administrative data for 434 women who received welfare in Wisconsin showed that fathers are less likely to provide informal support when their ex‐partner has a child with a new partner. Alternative models that control for unobserved characteristics suggest somewhat different results, providing stronger evidence of declines in support that can be shared across family members than in support that can be directed to a particular child.     

The Tempo of Sexual Activity and Later Relationship Quality

Rapid sexual involvement may have adverse long‐term implications for relationship quality. This study examined the tempo of sexual intimacy and subsequent relationship quality in a sample of married and cohabiting men and women. Data come from the Marital and Relationship Survey, which provides information on nearly 600 low‐ to moderate‐income couples living with minor children. Over one third of respondents became sexually involved within the first month of the relationship. Bivariate results suggested that delaying sexual involvement was associated with higher relationship quality across several dimensions. The multivariate results indicated that the speed of entry into sexual relationships was negatively associated with marital quality, but only among women. The association between relationship tempo and relationship quality was largely driven by cohabitation. Cohabiting may result in poorer quality relationship because rapid sexual involvement early in the romantic relationship is associated with entrance into shared living.