The national provident fund model: An analytical and evaluative reassessment

Both earlier and current analytical perspectives on appropriate modes of delivering retirement provision have tended to underestimate both the inherent adaptability and the developmental potentialities of the national provident fund (NPF) model. The essence of this model is found in the welfare salience of the possibility of synergy between the NPF's direct (retirement provision) and indirect (development finance institution) roles in developing political economies. Diffusion is found to be important in the development of the NPF model from Asian origins and in its subsequent retention in a limited number of states. NPF "success stories" are few in number but potentially significant given their regional concentration and impact, the latter currently underlined by further expansion and development of existing NPFs and by recently renewed prospects for regional diffusion of the model. Further examination of the significantly enhanced welfare outcomes achieved through the creative utilization of existing NPFs underlines the potentiality for NPF-led development within "pillarized" retirement provision.     

Play and Social Interaction in Children Following Divorce

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study of the effects of divorce on play and social interaction in children. Forty-eight middle class white preschool children from divorced families and a matched group of forty-eight non divorced families were studied at 2 months, 1 year and 2 years after divorce. In the first year following divorce disruptions were found in both play and social relations for boys and girls from divorced families. The adverse effects had largely disappeared for girls by two years after divorce; however, the effects were more intense and enduring for boys. The play patterns of children from divorced families, in comparison to those of children in non divorced families, were less socially and cognitively mature when measured shortly after divorce. Limitations and rigidity in fantasy play were particularly notable. In the year following divorce both boys and girls showed high rates of dependent helpseeking behavior and acting out, non-compliant behavior. This again was more enduring in boys than girls. Even when the behavior of boys from divorced families had improved they were viewed and responded to more negatively by peers and teachers than were children from non divorced families or girls from divorced families.     

Youth political involvement update: measuring the role of cause-oriented political interest in young people's activism

In recent decades, a series of transformations have occurred that have changed young people's relationships with politics. In most Western countries, young people vote less and protest more. Survey research has detected this two-fold process in participation behaviour, but has failed to detect this same process in the field of political attitudes. In particular, the emergence of a specific dimension of psychological political involvement with a special impact on youth has gone unnoticed in survey-based research. Based on some recent qualitative studies, this research tries to identify and measure a specific dimension of interest in politics using a new question in a survey carried out in Catalonia in 2011. An interest directly oriented to political issues and causes – particularly those relevant in young people's everyday lives – is identified. The article also evaluates how traditional survey indicators of political involvement do capture, or not, this particular dimension of interest in politics. Finally, the new cause-oriented interest indicator is tested to analyse its impact on different types of participation in order to better understand patterns of activism in young people.     

Customizing Quality Management Practices: A Conceptual and Measurement Framework

Quality management (QM) has often been promoted as a universal remedy, where organizations adopt these practices to enhance performance. However, implementation of QM has led to mixed results with some high‐profile failures. Some suggest that customizing QM practices to fit the organization's situational context can help avoid implementation failure and improve performance. However, research has not fully investigated how organizations should go about customizing quality practices. This article addresses this question by conceptualizing two fundamental yet different aspects of QM practices that have different learning objectives: quality exploitation (QEI) and quality exploration (QER). Drawing on experts and empirical data, we develop a reliable and valid set of measures for QEI and QER. Furthermore, the analysis shows the performance differences in the two sets of QM practices across different contextual settings. Specifically, the empirical results show that the benefits of different QM orientations depend on the level of competition and rate of product change. This research challenges prior conceptualizations of QM, and suggests a practical framework to guide decision makers in customizing QM practices.     

St. Clair Drake,the Chicago School,and the Emergence of a New Urban Black Perspective

St. Clair Drake was responsible for a major shift in the way urban sociologists studied cities. While educated by Chicago school scholars in sociology and anthropology, such as Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Drake was one of many Black doctoral students who veered from the dominant perspective of his White teachers on race. His skills in ethnographic research were indebted not only to Park and Burgess, but also to the work of Black scholars who came before him, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier. His unique personal approach to cities and their racial problems transitioned into a more global focus on the Black diaspora, colonialism and the history of African people, and cultures which connected him to a world of social action.     

Shift Restrictions and Semiparametric Estimation in Ordered Response Models

We develop a √n‐consistent and asymptotically normal estimator of the parameters (regression coefficients and threshold points) of a semiparametric ordered response model under the assumption of independence of errors and regressors. The independence assumption implies shift restrictions allowing identification of threshold points up to location and scale. The estimator is useful in various applications, particularly in new product demand forecasting from survey data subject to systematic misreporting. We apply the estimator to assess exaggeration bias in survey data on demand for a new telecommunications service.     

After the transnational turn: Looking across borders to see the hard face of the nation-state

This paper leverages the repressive turn in U.S. migration policy to understand how a cross-border perspective can illuminate the experiences of two different, but contemporaneous second-generation populations: Those whose lives have unfurled in the United States, all the while growing up in internationalized families with ongoing homeland ties; and those whose childhoods began in the United States, but were disrupted as part of the ‘Great Expulsion’, and thus migrated to Mexico, albeit often with U.S. citizenship and almost always with cross-border ties to family members still living in the United States. As the paper demonstrates, looking across borders highlights the importance of the territorial frontier and the continuing power of the national to undermine the forces that produce cross-border connections.