Voicing by Adapting and Innovating Employees: An Empirical Study on How Personality and Environment Interact to Affect Voice Behavior

This article reports two studies exploring howcognitive style preferences for adaption innovationaffect the likelihood that employees will voice ideasfor organizational change toward their supervisors. As hypothesized, Study 1 demonstrates thatinnovatively compared to adaptively predisposed policeofficers are less likely to voice conventional ideas andmore likely to voice novel ideas for solvingwork-related problems. Besides a replication of thesefindings, Study 2 shows how work satisfaction and thequality of the supervisor as voice manager shape theimpact of adaption innovation on employee likelihood to voice. That is, compared to innovators,adaptors are more likely to voice conventional ideaswhen they are dissatisfied rather than satisfied withwork and perceive their supervisors as effective rather than ineffective voice managers. On the otherhand, innovators compared to adaptors report greaterlikelihood to voice novel ideas when they are satisfiedrather than dissatisfied with work and perceive their supervisors as effective rather thanineffective voice managers. Theoretical and practicalimplications of the findings are discussed.     

Adolescent Gambling and Coping within a Generalized High-risk Behavior Framework

Data were collected for 1998 middle/high-school students in Ontario to assess involvement in gambling, substance use, and generalized risky behavior. To predict these outcomes, measures for anxiety, family cohesion, and coping style were also administered. Three a-priori models were posited to account for the impact of risk factors, protective factors, and combined risk/protective factors on the development of risky behaviors. A high-risk cohort composed of subjects endorsing at least one risky behavior (gambling, substance use, or generalized risky behavior) within the clinical range was created to test an unobserved outcome variable created from all three measures of risky behavior, which was successfully predicted by two of the three a-priori models. Implications for the inclusion of gambling within a constellation of high-risk behaviors and recommendations for future prevention efforts are discussed. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

The health-schooling relationship: evidence from Swedish twins

Health and education are known to be highly correlated, but the mechanisms behind the relationship are not well understood. In particular, there is sparse evidence on whether adolescent health may influence educational attainment. Using a large registry dataset of twins, including comprehensive information on health status at the age of 18 and later educational attainment, we investigate whether health predicts final education within monozygotic (identical) twin pairs. We find no evidence of this and conclude that health in adolescence may not have an influence on the level of schooling. Instead, raw correlations between adolescent health and schooling appear to be driven by genes and twin-pair-specific environmental factors.     

How to Select Representative Samples

We give a formal definition of a representative sample, but roughly speaking, it is a scaled‐down version of the population, capturing its characteristics. New methods for selecting representative probability samples in the presence of auxiliary variables are introduced. Representative samples are needed for multipurpose surveys, when several target variables are of interest. Such samples also enable estimation of parameters in subspaces and improved estimation of target variable distributions. We describe how two recently proposed sampling designs can be used to produce representative samples. Both designs use distance between population units when producing a sample. We propose a distance function that can calculate distances between units in general auxiliary spaces. We also propose a variance estimator for the commonly used Horvitz–Thompson estimator. Real data as well as illustrative examples show that representative samples are obtained and that the variance of the Horvitz–Thompson estimator is reduced compared with simple random sampling.     

You can go your own way! The long‐term effectiveness of a self‐employment programme for welfare recipients in Germany

In this study, we examined the long‐term effects of supporting welfare recipients by means of a subsidy to start their own business. We used administrative data and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of the subsidy on the probability of receiving welfare benefits and on unemployment status up to 72 months after programme start. We supplemented our estimation results with the results of a qualitative survey which provided insights into the diversity of entrepreneurial activities and the recipients' motivation for starting a business. Our results are encouraging. We found a stable positive effect on the outcomes of interest. We further found that foreign nationals and the long‐term unemployed benefit the most. We conclude that the subsidy allows some people to successfully start a business who would not have otherwise done so and who would have been less successful by choosing the alternative of continued job search.     

GRI Sustainability Reporting by INGOs: A Way Forward for Improving Accountability?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Considering that the members of the International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO) Accountability Charter played a...     

Modeling the Airborne Infection Risk of Tuberculosis for a Research Facility in eMalahleni,South Africa

A detailed mathematical modeling framework for the risk of airborne infectious disease transmission in indoor spaces was developed to enable mathematical analysis of experiments conducted at the Airborne Infections Research (AIR) facility, eMalahleni, South Africa. A model was built using this framework to explore possible causes of why an experiment at the AIR facility did not produce expected results. The experiment was conducted at the AIR facility from August 31, 2015 to December 4, 2015, in which the efficacy of upper room germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) irradiation as an environmental control was tested. However, the experiment did not produce the expected outcome of having fewer infections in the test animal room than the control room. The simulation results indicate that dynamic effects, caused by switching the GUV lights, power outages, or introduction of new patients, did not result in the unexpected outcomes. However, a sensitivity analysis highlights that significant uncertainty exists with risk of transmission predictions based on current measurement practices, due to the reliance on large viable literature ranges for parameters.     

Combining transition studies and social movement theory: towards a new research agenda

This article addresses two central—yet insufficiently explored—characteristics of some social movements: i.) abrupt and rapid social mobilizations leading to ii.) the construction of novel political processes and structures. The article takes a novel approach to these issues by combining social movement literature and the notion of free social spaces with transition studies, which focuses on large-scale socio-technical transitions. This theoretical integration highlights the co-evolution between free spaces and societal transitions, and it is based upon complexity-thinking, which is essential to deal with non-linear dynamics. A key insight is that to enable bottom-up societal transitions, radical social movements need to proactively develop solid alternatives to existing societal structures, to be ready once a window of opportunity opens. This theoretical approach is empirically illustrated using the APPO-movement in Mexico in 2006.     

Unemployment and Endogenous Growth

In this paper we develop a two-sector endogenous growth model with a dual labour market, based on efficiency wages. Growth is driven by intentional R&D performed in the high-tech and high-wage sector. How a change in rivalry among firms affects simultaneously growth and unemployment is examined. On the one hand, an increase of the elasticity of substitution between the product varieties of different high-tech firms reduces market power and leads to higher growth but reduces job prospects. On the other hand, if barriers to entry exist, an increase of the number of rivals in the market (due to removal of entry barriers) leads to lower growth, whereas the effect on aggregate employment is ambiguous.