100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

Occupational Engagement and Academic Major Satisfaction: Vocational Identity's Mediating Role

This study examined vocational identity as a mediator of the relationship between occupational engagement (i.e., participation in a breadth of activities and interactions) and academic major satisfaction. Furthermore, the authors evaluated whether satisfaction with academic major related to academic success (i.e., grade point average). The mediational model was tested in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 215). Results indicated that occupational engagement significantly predicted academic major satisfaction and that vocational identity fully mediated that relationship. These findings support occupational engagement as an important contributor to adaptive career decision making and encourage research on occupational engagement as an intervention point for career counselors.     

VALIDATION OF EXPERT SYSTEMS- WITH APPLICATIONS TO AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING EXPERT SYSTEMS*

This paper proposes a set of definitions for the concepts “validation” and “assessment” applied to expert systems (ESs). It develops a framework for this validation and demonstrates the framework on existing accounting and auditing ESs to elicit some of the research issues involved in ES validation. Validation is critical to the design and implementation of decision-making ESs. In a setting where objectivity is sought and variance is avoided, validation ascertains what a system knows, knows incorrectly, or does not know. Validation ascertains the system's level of expertise and investigates the theoretical basis on which the system is based. It evaluates the reliability of decisions made by the system. The validation framework developed in this paper is research methods. It is designed to reflect the unique aspects of ESs (in contrast to other types of computer programs) and can be used by ES developers as a basis from which to perform validation and by researchers as a framework to elicit research issues in validation.     

AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF COMPUTER-ASSISTED DECISION ANALYSIS*

Decision analysis tools often are used in semistructured and ill-structured situations. While some researchers have argued that computerized decision analysis programs may improve decision quality in such situations, research support for this assertion is weak. In this laboratory study, business students used a computerized decision-analysis program with short strategic-management cases to prepare decision reports. Independent raters' perceptions of aided and unaided decision performance were contrasted, attitudes of students toward the program were assessed, individual differences were correlated with attitudes, and the program's impact on students' perceptions of their decision processes and performance was examined. Student attitudes toward the computerized aid were favorable, and individual differences in reactions generally were as predicted. However, the program did not improve the independent ratings of students' decision reports and recommendations. These findings suggest that computerized decision aids should be adopted cautiously. If such aids result in positive user affect and heightened decision confidence without corresponding improvements in decision quality, they may be dysfunctional. Rigorous research methodologies which incorporate independent evaluations of analyses and decisions are recommended for use in future research on computerized decision-analysis programs.     

Ideas, private institutions and American welfare state 'exceptionalism': the case of health and old-age insurance, 1915–1965

Traditional theories of welfare state development divide into two camps: societal accounts and institutional accounts. The aim of the present article is to amend and enrich the institutional approach to US social policy by reconsidering key aspects of the genesis of the American welfare state: 1) showing that concepts such as 'policy feedback' and 'path dependence' need to be extended to encompass the effect of private social policies; and 2) taking policy paradigms and agenda setting more seriously than is the norm in institutional scholarship. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. The first part explores the activities of the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) in the decade beginning in 1910 and the genesis of Social Security in the 1930s, while the second part examines the effect of the private benefit developments on policy choices between 1935 and 1965.     

The influence of socio-economic characteristics on the political attitudes of American Indians

We examine the political attitudes of American Indians in eastern Oklahoma where they make up almost 20% of the population. We argue that American Indians in the region play the same role that other minorities in the southern states—notably blacks and Hispanics—do in resisting the region's realignment from the Democratic to the Republican Party. American Indians in the region are populists in that they are economically liberal and religiously conservative. The results of our analysis suggest that the socio-economic characteristics of American Indians play a greater role in explaining American Indians’ political attitudes than their ethnic identification.     

Investigating the implementation of SME-friendly policy in public procurement

Public sector employees with responsibility for purchasing are under increasing pressure to implement small and medium enterprise (SME)-friendly policies. Such policies are intended to make it easier for SMEs to compete for and win public sector contracts. In spite of the socio-economic importance of this issue, there remains a dearth of evidence on what is happening in practice. Using primary survey data from 271 public buyers in Ireland, this paper examines the extent to which SME-friendly procurement policy is being implemented and the individual and organization factors that affect implementation. The findings reveal a gap between what government policy recommends public buyers and their organizations should do to facilitate SMEs versus what they are actually doing. Policy familiarity, procurement involvement, organization size and the maturity of the procurement function are shown to be positively associated with the implementation of SME-friendly policy. For managers and legislators, the findings underline the need to invest in the human capital dimension of public procurement if policy implementation rates are to improve.     

THE EXTENT OF THE MARKET AND INTEGRATION THROUGH FACTOR MARKETS: EVIDENCE FROM WHOLESALE ELECTRICITY

We document the influence of factor markets in determining the extent of the market, appealing to the Mundell hypothesis that trade in goods and factor markets are substitutes. We confirm this influence using the U.S. wholesale market for electric power. Although the Eastern, Western, and Texas regions cannot trade electricity, inputs such as natural gas move freely across these regions. Through a set of price transmission ratios, and a supply model for natural gas, we find regional electricity shocks do propagate across regions. We conclude output markets institutionally in autarky achieve modest degrees of economic integration through factor markets. (JEL C32, L94, Q41)     

What is this moment we are caught in?

Our response to the question ‘What is this moment we are caught in?' is articulated through our collaborative reading of Berlant's (2011) Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Cruel optimism, Berlant suggests, is a desire for something that undermines its own potentiality. As queer academics we expose the cruelty of our desires to live a good academic life, and we do so from our different positions as postdoctoral fellow, tenured academic and PhD candidate. In labouring to consolidate relationships and practices that hold the promise of our own sustainability, we give accounts of the material and affective work we perform to constitute what Berlant calls an intimate public, a collective space of mediation that functions as a key tactic to manage our academic life. These accounts take the form of three vignettes, each inflected by the specificities of our different positions and histories of becoming academics. We use Berlant as a point of departure to both interrogate practices of self‐management and find possibilities for a collective response to the moments in which we find ourselves caught.