Differential Effects of Time Constraints on Athletic Behavior and Survey Reports of Athletic Behavior

Time constraints—having more to do than time to do it—can prevent us from doing everything we need and want to do. When lack of time constrains our behavior, the behavior linked to voluntary role identities (like being a member of a softball team or bowling league) may be the first to be cut. Although, as many of these role identities are socially desirable, survey respondents may still claim to have performed them. Thus, this study examines role behavior and its measurement in the face of time constraints. The athlete identity is examined as a potential casualty of the time crunch, used because it is a common, typically voluntary identity that has a relatively standard set of role behaviors (e.g., participating in sporting events, like games or matches, as an athlete). Situational constraints, namely, a lack of time, are brought into a model based on the structure posited in identity theory (Stryker [1980] 2003 Stryker, Sheldon. [1980] 2003. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Caldwell, NJ: The Blackburn Press. [Google Scholar]) to help explain variation between self-reported and actual role behavior. Thus, the current study examines the extent to which feeling pressed for time reduces actual athletic activity but fails to result in a concomitant reduction in self-reported athletic activity.     

Rethinking Land Grab Ontology

The current bout of land annexation expresses a particular moment in modern history—specifically the condensation of a series of linked crises. Arguably the world is at an ecological tipping point, and how land resources are managed now is of paramount concern. Of course, land management has variable meaning, with quite different ontological consequences. The difference registers in the distinct visions expressed, for example, by the World Bank and the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur, Olivier de Schutter, regarding the implications of the land grab for global food security. While the bank proposes responsible investments in “land acquisition,” the rapporteur argues that this is a way of “responsibly destroying the world's peasantry.” The former, concerned with governing the rights of capital, expresses a form of neoproductivism, signaled in the concept of “sustainable intensification” increasingly underwritten by agribusiness. The latter, concerned with protecting the material rights of rural inhabitants, expresses an ontology centered on the sustainability of agroecological methods used by farmers who know and value their landscapes. More than simply alternative visions, these represent different responses to the combined food, energy, and climate crises, informing quite distinctive ontologies concerning the relationship between “food security,” environmental crisis, and land management, which I address in this article in terms of the “ecology of food security.”     

Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War

Immigration scholars routinely overlook the 1968 U.S. Senate ratification of the United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, an international treaty defining a refugee in ideologically neutral terms. They dismiss this moment as symbolic because U.S. law continued to define a refugee as someone fleeing communism until the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. We use archival documents, interview data, and court cases to argue that legal and bureaucratic mobilization by refugee advocates throughout the 1970s drew on the Protocol, achieving incremental policy change even before 1980, and ultimately shaped the provisions of the Refugee Act itself.     

Actor-based analysis of peer influence in A Stop Smoking In Schools Trial (ASSIST)

As shown by the success of network intervention studies that exploit the occurrence of peer influence in their target group, the reliable assessment of peer influence processes can be important for informing public health policy and practice. A recently developed tool for assessing peer influence in longitudinal social network data is stochastic actor-based modeling. The body of the literature in which this method is applied is growing, but how reliable are the results? In this paper, we identify two shortcomings in this literature: the questionable assumption of temporal homogeneity, and the potential dependence of results on the inclusion of nuisance parameters in the model specification. These issues are resolved by analyzing the data of three schools selected from ASSIST, a large UK-based trial of a school-based smoking prevention intervention. Results show that the co-evolution of friendship and smoking is a time heterogeneous process, and that results are sensitive to specification details. However, the peer influence parameter is not affected by either, but emerges as surprisingly stable over time and robust to model variation. This establishes confidence in the method and encourages detailed future investigations of peer influence in ASSIST.     

Social norms and tax compliance: Framing the decision to pay tax

Observed levels of tax compliance are higher than predicted levels (when predictions are based on Allingham and Sandmo's neoclassical model of tax evasion). They are higher if social norms recognise the importance of compliance. But how do social norms frame decisions to pay tax? Can prospect theory be applied to shed insight into the way that social norms exert their influence? An analysis of questionnaire responses (from Italy and from the UK) suggests that they exert their influence by changing the reference points that individuals use when they code changes as ‘gains’, or ‘losses’. The evidence suggests that social norms frame the decision to pay tax by changing individuals’ perceptions of their entitlement to income. This consideration is important when designing policy to deter evasion.     

The Perils of Balance Testing in Experimental Design: Messy Analyses of Clean Data

Widespread concern over the credibility of published results has led to scrutiny of statistical practices. We address one aspect of this problem that stems from the use of balance tests in conjunction with experimental data. When random assignment is botched, due either to mistakes in implementation or differential attrition, balance tests can be an important tool in determining whether to treat the data as observational versus experimental. Unfortunately, the use of balance tests has become commonplace in analyses of “clean” data, that is, data for which random assignment can be stipulated. Here, we show that balance tests can destroy the basis on which scientific conclusions are formed, and can lead to erroneous and even fraudulent conclusions. We conclude by advocating that scientists and journal editors resist the use of balance tests in all analyses of clean data. Supplementary materials for this article are available online     

CEO Duality,Agency Costs,and Internal Capital Allocation Efficiency

This study examines the impact of CEO duality on firms’ internal capital allocation efficiency. We observe that when the CEO is also chair of the board, diversified firms make inefficient investments, as they allocate more capital to business segments with relatively low growth opportunities over segments with high growth opportunities. The adverse impact of CEO duality on investment efficiency prevails only among firms that face high agency problems, as captured by high free cash flows, staggered board structure and low board independence. Depending on the severity of the agency problem, CEO duality is associated with a decrease in industry‐adjusted investment in high‐growth segments of 1% to 2.1% over the following year, relative to that in low‐growth segments. However, CEOs’ equity‐based compensation curbs the negative effect of CEO duality on internal capital allocation efficiency. Overall, the findings of this study offer strong support for the agency theory and postulate the internal capital allocation policy as an important channel through which CEO duality lowers firm value in diversified firms.     

A performative exploration of the lifeworlds of human capital and financial capital: an intellectual capital case vignette

Journal of Management and Governance - The primary purpose here is to briefly outline and illustrate how one particular relationist/realist ontological approach to performative research, with a...