Non-profit-funding environment relations: theory and application

The relationships between funding heterogeneity and organisational structure and functioning were examined for a panel of non-profit organisations. Resource dependence and institutional theory were used to derive hypotheses predicting positive associations between funding heterogeneity and non-profit boundary spanning, modelling and participation in collective efforts. For non-profits which were less vulnerable to institutional aspects of their environments, funding heterogeneity was found to have a positive effect on boundary spanning, consistent with resource dependence theory. For non-profits which were more vulnerable to institutional factors, on the other hand, funding heterogeneity was found to have positive effects on modelling and participation in collective efforts; consistent with institutional theory. These results argue that resource dependence and institutional theory need to be combined for the analysis of organisation-environment relations and suggest how this could be accomplished.The research described in this article was sponsored by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Program on Nonprofit Organizations at Yale University, and the University of Minnesota. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1990 Meetings of the American Sociological Association, August 11–15, Washington, D.C.     

Mobbing — Herkunft des Begriffs und sein theoretischer Hintergrund

In his palae-anthropological work on the ‘aggressiveness of taking offence’, German medical researcher Rudolf Bilz initially developed the present-day meaning of the term ‘mobbing’. Building on Bilz’s theory, we develop two schemes that allow a differentiated classification of conflicts within and between groups, and corresponding group phenomena including mobbing and bossing. The implications of applying this framework to diagnosis, intervention and prevention of mobbing are discussed. Key issue is the implementation of group norms, which is the essence of the atavistic mobbing mechanism and has to be brought into the open. There is a need for replacement by alternatives such as more intensive group contact, supervision, group leadership, works councils, and mediation.     

Modelling concurrency of events in on-line auctions via spatiotemporal semiparametric models

Summary.  We introduce a semiparametric approach for modelling the effect of concurrent events on an outcome of interest. Concurrency manifests itself as temporal and spatial dependences. By temporal dependence we mean the effect of an event in the past. Modelling this effect is challenging since events arrive at irregularly spaced time intervals. For the spatial part we use an abstract notion of 'feature space' to conceptualize distances among a set of item features. We motivate our model in the context of on-line auctions by modelling the effect of concurrent auctions on an auction's price. Our concurrency model consists of three components: a transaction-related component that accounts for auction design and bidding competition, a spatial component that takes into account similarity between item features and a temporal component that accounts for recently closed auctions. To construct each of these we borrow ideas from spatial and mixed model methodology. The power of this model is illustrated on a large and diverse set of laptop auctions on eBay.com. We show that our model results in superior predictive performance compared with a set of competitor models. The model also allows for new insight into the factors that drive price in on-line auctions and their relationship to bidding competition, auction design, product variety and temporal learning effects.     

Kulturelle Diversität und Realitätsdeutungen – Zur Reichweite von Beratungskonzeptionen

This article views theoretical and practical conceptions of counseling as social constructions of reality. A counseling process is a discourse on such different constructions and—especially in culturally diverse constellations—confronts different ideas e.g. about anthropology, personality, disease/wellness and interpersonal relations which is significant for the range of value of counseling conceptions.     

The Long-Term Effect of the Timing of Fertility Decline on Population Size

Existing long-range population projections imply that the timing of the fertility transition has a relatively unimportant effect on long-term population size when compared with the impact of the level at which fertility is assumed eventually to stabilize. However, this note shows that the effect of the timing of fertility decline is a function of the eventual fertility rate: the lower the eventual fertility rate, the greater the effect of the timing of the transition becomes. This finding has important implications for projection methodology, as well as for policies related to the consequences of long-term levels of population size.     

On the representation of classificatory value structures

Theory and Decision -