The Effects of Family-Friendly Policies and Workplace Social Support on Parenting Stress in Employed Mothers Working Nonstandard Hours

This study examines whether family-friendly policies (childcare leave, on-site childcare, and flexible working hours) and workplace social support (supervisor and coworker support) in South Korea are directly related to parenting stress among employed mothers with nonstandard work schedules. In addition, this study investigates the moderating role of family-supportive organization perceptions in the aforesaid associations. Data were collected from 223 employed mothers who have nonstandard work schedules with at least one or more children under the age of six. Results show that on-site childcare, flexible working hours, and supervisor support are negatively associated with parenting stress, whereas childcare leave is positively associated with parenting stress. Employed mothers with high family-supportive organization perceptions report low levels of parenting stress when they received high levels of supervisor support or did not take childcare leave. Additionally, employed mothers with low family-supportive organization perceptions report high levels of parenting stress when they did not use on-site childcare. Consequently, our findings indicate that employed mothers’ greater family-supportive organization perceptions are key factor reducing their parenting stress when they are limited to use family-friendly policies. Implications are discussed in terms of the importance of work-family intervention to the work-family balance among mothers working nonstandard hours.     

Public's expectation about an organization's stance in crisis communication based on perceived leadership and perceived severity of threats

Considering the importance of general public support of an organization during a crisis, this study examined how perceived leadership style influences public expectation about an organization's stance in crisis and the relationship between perceived severity of threat and the expected stance of the organization based on leadership perception. The results of the study strongly supported main effects of leadership on public estimation about an organization's stance. Managerial implications were discussed.     

Chinese Relationalism: Theoretical Construction and Methodological Considerations

The goal of this article is attempting to establish a research tradition of Chinese relationalism on the methodological grounds of constructive realism. Two of Ho's (1993, 1998a) key concepts, person-in-relations and persons-in-relation, are carefully examined and reinterpreted. Three of my theoretical models, namely, my Face and Favor model (Hwang, 1987), Confucian ethics for ordinary people (Hwang, 1995), and a conflict resolution model (Hwang, 1997-8), are conceived of as microworlds for illustrating an account of person-in relations in Chinese culture. The manifestation of Confucian ethics for ordinary people in one's lifeworld results in the phenomenology of persons-in-relations as depicted by Fei's (1948) differential order or Hsu's (1971a) psychosociogram. Applying constructive realism to my models and using the result as a framework for studying Chinese social behavior constitutes Chinese relationalism.     

Improved confidence estimators for Fieller's confidence sets

Fieller's confidence set C_F for ratios of location parameters, although of great importance in practice, is often cited as an example to criticize frequentist theory. The reason is that the set can consist of the whole parameter space and yet the confidence is γ = 1 – α in any case. In this paper, we study the problem of constructing data-dependent estimators better than γ₊, A reasonable estimator appears to be γ₊, which is one if C_F is the whole parameter space and γ otherwise. By using an estimated confidence approach and a squared-error loss, it is shown that γ₊ dominates γ. The risk improvement of γ₊ over γ can be sizable. Also, by numerically comparing γ₊ with a generalized Bayes estimator γ_L, which is shown to be admissible when one or two ratios are concerned, it is shown that γ₊ is nearly admissible. We also conclude that the common practice of reporting 1 – α only when C_F is not the whole parameter space is nearly admissible.     

The Rules of the Game: The Politics of National Pensions in Korea

This article explores the conditions in which policy changes occur over time. It studies the institutional pathways taken by national pensions in Korea over an extended period by identifying the key moments which have pushed through their development: initiation (1973), implementation (1988) and reform (1998). Public pensions have developed over time in an incremental fashion, bringing an ever‐growing proportion of the population under their umbrella. What accounts for this development? A number of factors may be at work. The elderly population has rapidly increased; the traditional extended family has increasingly become a nuclear one, meaning that what used simply to be a family issue of protecting the elderly has become a social matter; urbanization and industrialization have resulted in an ever‐growing number of life‐time contingencies such as unexpected income losses. Convincing as these socio‐economic accounts may seem, however, they offer only a snapshot, underscoring the politics of national pensions which stretch over long periods. This article seeks to answer how and in whose interest national pensions come on to the political agenda; how they are framed and defined; and how political actors respond to pressures for national pension reform. In each of the three stages, it is suggested, somewhat different institutional rules have operated. Defining institutional rules as ‘the process of who gets represented in the decision‐making processes’, this article identifies the different institutional rules which have played a pivotal role in the social policy‐making processes.     

A Remark on the Zhang Omnibus Test for Normality

Zhang (1999) proposed a novel test statistic Q for testing normality based on the ratio of two unbiased standard deviation estimators, q₁ and q₂, for the true population standard deviation σ. Mingoti & Neves (2003) discussed some properties of q₁ and q₂ and showed that the variance of q₁ increases as the true population variance increases. In this paper, we show that the distribution of q₁ is not normal. As a result, normality percentage points for Q are not appropriate. In this paper, percentage points of Q are obtained using simulations. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to evaluate the performance of the new method and Zhang's method.     

ETHNIC ENCLOSURE OR ETHNIC COMPETITION: Ethnic Identification Among Hispanics in Texas

Recent theoretical debates have focused on the utility of two alternative perspectives on ethnic identification. However, empirical support for either is neither consistent nor conclusive and previous analyses seldom conceptually or empirically examine the aggregate macrostructural determinants of ethnic identification. This study reevaluates the relative merits of the ethnic enclosure and ethnic competition perspectives among Texan Hispanics using aggregate 1980 Census of Population data for 139 Texas cities with large Hispanic populations. The rejection of the ethnic enclosure thesis in some recent research is unwarranted, as the empirical evidence provides it substantial support and little for the ethnic competition perspective. Further analyses of structural factors in ethnic identification are merited.     

Workplace support and European fathers’ use of state policies promoting shared childcare

ABSTRACT

Social policies such as paternity leave and parental leave offer fathers the opportunity to be more involved in childcare than earlier generations of fathers. While such policies are increasingly offered by governments around the world, research by the International Network on Leave Policies and Research shows that many European fathers do not take advantage of these benefits, despite fathers’ growing interest in participation in early childcare. This article introduces a special issue devoted to understanding how the workplace can impact European fathers’ interest in and abilities to take leave, a topic that has received relatively little research attention. The articles in the special issue suggest that barriers to European fathers’ leavetaking are deeply embedded in workplace culture and work practices and will be difficult to eradicate without a dramatic challenge to the concept of the male ideal worker, who prioritizes work above family.     

The chernoff efficiency of the wilcoxon rank test

Exact limiting Chernoff efficiencies of the Wilcoxon rank test are derived using Hoadley's results. Efficiency curves are derived for the two-sample Wilcoxon rank test relative to the two-sample t test for normal shift alternatives when the null hypothesis is that of common normality. The comparisons with Bahadur efficiency and small sample Hodges-Lehmann efficiency-are also made.     

State Economic Strength and Some Methodological Issues on Its Assessment

At present, many international organizations and scholars, who are aimed to compare and assess country-specific economy or competitiveness, have set different standards and indicators and tried to assess the economic strength of individual country. But most of these standards and indicators are for the assessment of individual aspects and what is worse, they are not suitable for the real situation of the countries concerned. This paper deals with methodological issues on the assessment of state economic strength. To this end, authors investigate the preceding studies on the assessment of economy of a given country, conceptualize the state economic strength, set a new system of indicators for assessing it and on this basis, produce a methodology for the synthetic assessment of state economic strength. The findings are that state economic strength must be defined in a view of economic capability which any country can exhibit by itself even under uncertain external environment, the indicators for assessing it include a variety of indicators in line with its essence, and assessment methodology must be synthetic one based on considering the weights of indicators. These findings may help, on the one hand, in assessing the economy of a given country and taking an economic and technical measures for its strengthening for policymakers, and on the other hand, in comparing and assessing the country-specific economy for organizations or scholars in a new perspective.