Strategic leadership for exploration and exploitation: The moderating role of environmental dynamism

This study advances prior theoretical research by linking transformational and transactional behaviors of strategic leaders to two critical outputs of organizational learning: exploratory and exploitative innovation. Findings indicate that transformational leadership behaviors contribute significantly to adopting generative thinking and pursuing exploratory innovation. Transactional leadership behaviors, on the other hand, facilitate improving and extending existing knowledge and are associated with exploitative innovation. In addition, we argue that environmental dynamism needs to be taken into account to fully understand the effectiveness of strategic leaders. Our study provides new insights that misfits rather than fits between leadership behaviors and innovative outcomes matter in dynamic environments. Hence, we contribute to the debate on the role of strategic leaders in managing exploration and exploitation, not only by examining how specific leadership behaviors impact innovative outcomes, but also by revealing how the impact of leadership is contingent upon dynamic environmental conditions.     

The sugarcane-biofuel expansion and dairy farmers' responses in Brazil

The expansion of sugarcane for biofuels is a highly contentious issue. The growth of sugarcane area has occurred simultaneously with a reduction of dairy production in São Paulo state, the primary production region for sugar and ethanol in Brazil. This paper analyses different dairy farm rationales to continue dairy production in the context of a dramatically expanding sugarcane economy. Combining different data sets – semi-structured interviews with 34 farmers and baseline data from all members of a dairy farm co-operative – makes it possible to recognize different farm types. This heuristic tool is used to identify the various strategies regarding shifting to biofuel production or investing in dairy farming. The paper identifies labour availability, household resilience and technology introduction as key factors in the context of complex, multiple interactions between the biofuel sector and dairy production. We will argue that biofuel-sugarcane expansion not always pushes aside dairy farming. Those farmers that shift to sugarcane are not simply spurred by better prices, but mainly change as result of perceptions of labour constraints, risks and the opportunities offered by diversification. For farmers who totally quit dairy production the shift to sugarcane may pass the point of no return.     

Friendships of Indonesian Children: Adjustment of Children Who Differ in Friendship Presence and Similarity Between Mutual Friends

Two aspects of the friendships of 960 Indonesian 10‐year‐old children were assessed. First, the characteristics of children with and without mutual friends were compared. Children without friends were more aggressive, withdrawn, and lower in academic achievement and social preference than those with friends. Second, similarities between children and their friends were assessed by comparing 132 target children with their friend and non‐friend classmates. Children were more similar to their friends than to non‐friends in social preference, achievement, peer and teacher rated antisocial behavior, and peer and teacher rated social withdrawal. The similarities of the friendships of Indonesian children to those of Western children with respect to these two features provide evidence of construct equivalence of friendships across cultures.     

Enabling sexual self-fashioning: embracing,rejecting and transgressing modernity among the Iranian Dutch

Modernity figures prominently in understanding change in diasporic sexual cultures, particularly when it comes to Muslim immigrants living in Western countries. Prevailing academic analyses of sexuality in the Iranian diaspora focus on the willingness and ability to embrace ‘modern’ notions of sexual liberty, individual self-fulfilment and gender equality. This approach attributes an assumed progression from a traditional past to a modern present to the Iranian immigrants, and determines simultaneously the extent of their integration into the ‘host’ culture. As an alternative to this dominant perception of change in which modernity is seen as an indicator of cultural progression, this paper proposes the concept of sexual self-fashioning to investigate the diasporic articulations of sexuality in various discursive uses of modernity as investments in processes of subjectivity. Based on an ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2014, the Iranian Dutch’ perceptions of specific sexual issues are analysed as vehicles to sexual self-fashioning. It is argued that a sexual self is actively negotiated and created through embracing, rejecting and transgressing modernity, which enables the interlocutors to position themselves in different fields of socio-cultural or religious belonging.     

Marshall and Gorman's Markov chain model for occupational prestige

This report scrutinizes the Markov chain model for occupational prestige proposed by K. P. Marshall and B. L. Gorman (1975, Social Science Research 4, 41–64). It is shown that the results of their application are highly unstable.     

Why is Housing Always Satisfactory? A Study into the Impact of Preference and Experience on Housing Appreciation

This study focuses on residents’ perceptions of residential quality concerning 23 different dwelling aspects. Respondents were asked to indicate their appreciation of these dwelling aspects on a scale ranging from 0 (“extremely unattractive”) to 100 (“extremely attractive”). The influence of two potential factors on the appreciation of dwelling aspects is examined: (1) preference and (2) experience. It was hypothesized that residents who live according to their preferences give higher appreciation scores than residents who do not. This should even apply to low-quality housing. Furthermore, it was argued that residents appreciate their current housing situation more than residents who do not live in that particular housing situation. This effect should be independent of preference. The impact of both preference and of experience could be confirmed. The results also showed an interaction effect between preference and experience: the positive effect of experience on appreciation is larger in residents who live in a housing situation that they do not prefer. This result would be expected if the impact of experience works to decrease the ‘gap’ in residential satisfaction due to the discrepancy between what residents have and what they want. In conclusion, why is housing always satisfactory? In this paper, housing is satisfactory because the ‘gap’ between what residents want and what they have is small; residents seem to have realistic aspirations. Furthermore, residents appreciate what they already have, even if this is not what they prefer.     

National Numbers in Context: Maps and Stats in Representations of the Post-Yugoslav Wars

This article critically examines and contextualises the role of nationality statistics and maps in representations of the post-Yugoslav wars. Approaching these wars, a conflict involving competing nationalisms centred upon modern technologies of power/knowledge, I deploy the term “national numbers” to refer to the discursive node where numerical data about the nationality of the population and territorial mappings converge. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork since 1996, this article explores how the reliance on national numbers and their territorialisation functions as the lynchpin of a dominant “mosaic” mode of representation of the post-Yugoslav wars. Examining their workings within local and international governance, in experiences of “ethnic cleansing” in the post-Yugoslav states and in discourses aiming to know, understand, explain, and represent the violence, it then makes a case for a healthy dose of critical distance with regard to the deployment of national numbers. In particular, we need to contextualise them in relation to the role of national categories and other lines of differentiation in Yugoslavia. Anthropologists and other social scientists, who take pride in providing strongly contextualised understandings of social phenomena, seem to be particularly well placed to do so.     

Positioning and subjectivation in research interviews: why bother talking to a researcher?

Qualitative research interviews constitute specific contexts for creating and telling stories. This study illuminates the significance of the research interview on the subjectivation of participants who are usually rendered problematic or victimized – in this case, young people who live in residential care provided by child protection services (CPS). It explores how the interview situation offers possible subject positions for the interviewees that contradict with how they are positioned in their daily lives. In contrast to the conversations, these young people often engage in with professionals, the research interview may position them as competent actors. It may also allow for a greater degree of complexity, ambiguity, and ambivalence. When the aim is not necessarily to acquire an understanding of how things ‘really are,’ or to describe the participants in categorical ways, the variety and diversity of life may be speakable. This in turn allows for the telling of new narratives, the prospect of other subjectivities and the creation of new developmental possibilities.