Digitalisierung und Konvergenz von Online- und Offline-Welt

The increasing diffusion of mobile phones with internet access (Smartphones) enables more and more consumers to use the mobile internet. In addition, there is a continuing integration of location-based services (LBS). By means of Global Positioning Systems or WiFi-triangulation LBS provide context-aware information to consumers. This leads to a convergence of online and offline worlds. The usage of LBS delivers additional information to consumers (e.g. alternative offers or detailed product information). Therefore LBS do have an influence on consumer behavior. Particularly during the search process, information about prices or geographic distances, that are relevant for the purchase, are of importance. This study analyzes the relevance of location-based internet search empirically. Search costs are estimated on an individual level in a choice-based conjoint analysis using two different products. As a result, location-based internet search is considered to be very relevant for search and influential on consumer behavior. The study shows different consumers preferences and different search costs depending on the product. To conclude the study, the implications are discussed. The major contribution of this study is that it shows that offline and online search do have a mutual impact on each other. Furthermore, search costs are measured in a mobile context.     

Monte carlo approximation to edgeworth expansions

Since the 1930s, empirical Edgeworth expansions have been employed to develop techniques for approximate, nonparametric statistical inference. The introduction of bootstrap methods has increased the potential usefulness of Edgeworth approximations. In particular, a recent paper by Lee & Young introduced a novel approach to approximating bootstrap distribution functions, using first an empirical Edgeworth expansion and then a more traditional bootstrap approximation to the remainder. In principle, either direct calculation or computer algebra could be used to compute the Edgeworth component, but both methods would often be difficult to implement in practice, not least because of the sheer algebraic complexity of a general Edgeworth expansion. In the present paper we show that a simple but nonstandard Monte Carlo technique is a competitive alternative. It exploits properties of Edgeworth expansions, in particular their parity and the degrees of their polynomial terms, to develop particularly accurate approximations.     

Union views of managerial prerogatives revisited: The prospects for labor-management cooperation

Using data from a survey of AFL-CIO affiliated unions, I compare union views of managerial prerogatives in 1997 with those reported in a 1968 study. Unions today desire more input into the firm's decision-making process than in 1968, particularly with regard to issues traditionally reserved to management. Given management's traditional resistance to “outside” interference, more cooperative relationships between unions and managment may be problematic. I thank Richard Hoppins and Edwin Sexton for research assistance.     

Reconstructing developmental psychology—some first steps

My starting point is the claim that developmental psychology has traditionally projected a standardised image of childhood, especially through the emphasis on describing universal stages of psychological growth within what are assumed to be normal childhood environments. These reifications of universality and normality have in turn regulated social action at individual, family and school level. Increasingly, these same images are being idealised and treated as a standard for judging the quality of childhood in contexts far removed from their Euro-American origins. I explore the historical roots of universalistic thinking about children's nature, their needs and what constitutes healthy development and consider the opportunities for a new psychology of childhood to be reconstructed in ways that pay more attention to the cultural dimensions of the subject. I illustrate the growing interest amongst psychologists in studying children's development as a socio-cultural process, as well as the lessons of social constructionist critiques of the developmental paradigm itself. I conclude by reflecting on some of the challenges facing psychological studies of childhood issues that are more reflexive, inclusive and cultural. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Existence and Uniqueness of Maximal Reductions Under Iterated Strict Dominance

Iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies is an order dependent procedure. It can also generate spurious Nash equilibria, fail to converge in countable steps, or converge to empty strategy sets. If best replies are well–defined, then spurious Nash equilibria cannot appear; if strategy spaces are compact and payoff functions are uppersemicontinuous in own strategies, then order does not matter; if strategy sets are compact and payoff functions are continuous in all strategies, then a unique and nonempty maximal reduction exists. These positive results extend neither to the better–reply secure games for which Reny has established the existence of a Nash equilibrium, nor to games in which (under iterated eliminations) any dominated strategy has an undominated dominator.     

Powerless,Stupefied, and Repressed Actors Cannot Challenge Climate Change: Real Helplessness as a Barrier Between Environmental Concern and Action

There is a gap between concern about environmental degradation such as climate change and effective action taken against the forces that drive degradation. This paper argues that real helplessness, a social condition producing powerless, stupefied, and repressed actors, is a fortified barrier between climate concern and effective climate action. Political-economic analysis has theoretical and methodological implications for environmental social science and helps explain a current conundrum in critical sociology: Why are alternatives to a system that drives climate change and other catastrophic risks still seen as unrealistic? We suffer from a political-economic system impervious to transformation before we suffer from a lack of alternative ideas.     

Group psychotherapy with pathological gamblers

This paper reviews some of the group therapy techniques utilized in the authors' work with pathological gamblers. These conceptual tools ranged from rational-emotive psychotherapy to Zen philosophy which provided a background and foundation for working with pathological gamblers. Many therapeutic and antitherapeutic beliefs and behaviors of gamblers are discussed including narcissism, manipulative behavior, and rejection of Gamblers Anonymous. Each technique, behavior or belief discussed is explained in terms of how each affects the group process and how each is managed in group therapy.This paper represents a discourse on the group treatment of pathological gamblers primarily from the experiences of Julian Ingersoll Taber, Ph.D. who was the coordinator of the Gambling Treatment Program at the Cleveland Veterans Administration Medical Center for seven years. Dr. Taber is currently Chief of the Addictive Disorders Treatment Program at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Reno, Nevada. Martin Paul Chaplin, Ph.D., who is specializing in the treatment of addiction, assisted in the theoretical and editorial aspects of this article. He worked under the aegis of Dr. Taber as an intern at the Gambling Treatment Program and currently has a position at Community Mental Health Services of Medina in Ohio.     

Proportional Hazards in Information Security

Nonparametric methods can be used to analyze failure times and estimate probability distributions for failures of systems due to successful attacks on confidentiality, integrity, and availability in information security. However, such methods do not take full advantage of supplemental information regarding the configurations of systems in an information infrastructure that is usually also available. One approach, which does take advantage of such information, views the risks of systems failing from various causes as competing risks and determines the correlation coefficients of different treatments to system longevity. Since the times and causes of failure in such studies are usually uncorrelated, the hazards associated with each risk are proportional. By correlating system survival times to the use of specific design enhancements and security countermeasures, as well as to system exposure based on choice of operational functionality, guidance can be obtained for making investments in information security.     

Changing class complexions on and in the British countryside

This paper explores the class complexion of the English and Welsh countryside utilising the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (or NS-SEC), as well as reflecting on the value of this classification given claims as to the ‘death of class’ as a meaningful subject of analysis. The paper situates analysis using the NS-SEC in a paradoxical context, whereby its very use appears, on the one hand, to demonstrate successful incorporation of academic constructions of class into the agencies of governmental social statistical production, while, on the other hand, academic discourses, including some within rural studies, appear to have undermined its very rationale. The paper argues that the classification lends support to claims that rural studies have used an overly aggregative concept of the middle class that obscures the spatial distribution of classes in the British countryside, although interpretation of the classification also needs to consider a range of broader criticisms of class analysis. The paper concludes by suggesting that the paradox surrounding the classification and rural class analysis more generally might be viewed through Latour's, [1999. Pandora's hope. Harvard University Press, London] concept of knowledge as a ‘circulatory system.’