Social Capital Across the Life Course: Age and Gendered Patterns of Network Resources1

Despite increasing research interest in network dynamics and cumulative advantage/disadvantage processes, little remains known about how social capital varies across the life course. While some researchers suggest that social capital increases with age and others argue the opposite, this study tests these contradictory assertions by analyzing multiple indicators of social capital from a nationally representative data set on working‐age U.S. respondents. The findings reveal evidence of both social capital accumulation and decline. Social resources from occupational contacts tend to increase with age, but eventually level off among older respondents. Changes in voluntary memberships follow a similar pattern. However, daily social interaction is negatively associated with age. Overall, the results suggest that social capital embedded in occupational networks tends to accumulate across the career, even in the face of a general decline in sociability. The study also uncovers gender differences in these social capital trajectories that are linked to the distinct life experiences of men and women.     

Transnational-Migrant Domestic Workers' Cultural Activism Online: The Case of an Indonesian Islamic-Writing Group in Hong Kong

This study aims to illustrate the nuanced efficacy of Islamic-writing activism by Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, who vigorously utilize online spheres. We regard this group as a part of transnational migrant domestic workers' cultural activism, which is currently flourishing in the region. In particular, we pay a special attention to this group's intersectional themes in Islam and writing, to ask how an intersectional activist group utilizes online terrains and multiple themes, to nurture affective ties with others and simultaneously build activist networks. By combining questionnaires, socio-metric surveys, interviews and web content analysis, we argue that the participation in this activism allows the members collective and personal empowerment online. From the data analyses, we uncover three key features of the members' Facebook usage: maintaining weak ties by balancing multiple group memberships, using tools for interactive self-identification, and being driven by networking. Additionally, the members re-contextualized their gender and class identities in positive ways, using Islam and writing. We argue that the members utilized Islam chiefly as moral yardstick and image-making, while writing as a multitasking tool and an alternative class marker for them.Through these acts of re-contextualization, the members recreate their alternative self-identifications incorporating class, religion, gender and nationality seamlessly. These features partly resonate with their offline behaviors, to assist and synthesize their attempt at self-actualization in-between their cultural spaces, by integrating the host society, native society, and the activist society.     

Deep Learning Models for Health and Safety Risk Prediction in Power Infrastructure Projects

Inappropriate management of health and safety (H&S) risk in power infrastructure projects can result in occupational accidents and equipment damage. Accidents at work have detrimental effects on workers, company, and the general public. Despite the availability of H&S incident data, utilizing them to mitigate accident occurrence effectively is challenging due to inherent limitations of existing data logging methods. In this study, we used a text-mining approach for retrieving meaningful terms from data and develop six deep learning (DL) models for H&S risks management in power infrastructure. The DL models include DNN_classify (risk or no risk), DNN_reg1 (loss time), DNN_reg2 (body injury), DNN_reg3 (plant and fleet), DNN_reg4 (equipment), and DNN_reg5 (environment). An H&S risk database obtained from a leading UK power infrastructure construction company was used in developing the models using the H2O framework of the R language. Performances of DL models were assessed and benchmarked with existing models using test data and appropriate performance metrics. The overall accuracy of the classification model was 0.93. The average R² value for the five regression models was 0.92, with mean absolute error between 0.91 and 0.94. The presented results, in addition to the developed user-interface module, will help practitioners obtain a better understanding of H&S challenges, minimize project costs (such as third-party insurance and equipment repairs), and offer effective strategies to mitigate H&S risk.     

Response surface design evaluation and comparison

Designing an experiment to fit a response surface model typically involves selecting among several candidate designs. There are often many competing criteria that could be considered in selecting the design, and practitioners are typically forced to make trade-offs between these objectives when choosing the final design. Traditional alphabetic optimality criteria are often used in evaluating and comparing competing designs. These optimality criteria are single-number summaries for quality properties of the design such as the precision with which the model parameters are estimated or the uncertainty associated with prediction. Other important considerations include the robustness of the design to model misspecification and potential problems arising from spurious or missing data. Several qualitative and quantitative properties of good response surface designs are discussed, and some of their important trade-offs are considered. Graphical methods for evaluating design performance for several important response surface problems are discussed and we show how these techniques can be used to compare competing designs. These graphical methods are generally superior to the simplistic summaries of alphabetic optimality criteria. Several special cases are considered, including robust parameter designs, split-plot designs, mixture experiment designs, and designs for generalized linear models.     

Allocation Processes in Mergers and Acquisitions: An Organizational Justice Perspective

This paper contributes to the understanding of allocation processes in mergers and acquisitions by applying an organizational justice perspective. This is a perspective that has been neglected in past research on mergers and acquisitions, but which is important in understanding the challenges managers face in allocating human resources and other resources of symbolic importance. In particular, the paper examines the trade-offs between multiple goals in selecting distributive and procedural justice rules, and identifies factors that constrain these choices. Mergers and acquisitions are typically driven by multiple motives. The findings presented in this paper suggest that there are different approaches to applying justice rules in mergers and acquisitions and that these approaches have different implications for meeting multiple goals. The choice of equity in combinations with fair procedural rules is an approach which complies with the two goals of maximizing economic productivity and fostering relationships. However, the choice of this approach rests upon an unbalanced power relationship and relatively low ambiguity. When there is a high degree of ambiguity and a balanced power relationship, management has to make trade-offs between maximizing economic productivity and fostering relationships.     

Making Radical Change Happen Through Selective Inclusion and Exclusion of Stakeholders*

The purpose of this paper is to explore how political leaders can gain acceptance for radical reforms through selective inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders. We had inside access to the formulation of a radical reform in the Scandinavian context and found that radical change was not secured through extensive participation, but rather through selective inclusion and exclusion of stakeholders. Change leaders cannot always choose who to include and exclude in participative processes and both proponents and opponents can influence the content in ways that make it less radical. In the context of the public sector, it becomes particularly challenging to gain acceptance for radical reforms because of the influence from multiple stakeholders, many of whom have the right to be included in the process. Based on a study of a Norwegian regulatory reform, we identify five tactics change leaders can use to manage selective inclusion and exclusion. These include deleting stages in the process, including new stakeholders, alternating the process sequence, suppressing issues, and controlling the kind of influence. By consciously including and excluding stakeholders, change leaders can secure that the radicalness of a reform is preserved in the formulation process.     

Boys Meet Girls’ Rights: Bolivian Adolescent Males’ Claims of Commitment to Gender Equality

This article describes a qualitative study exploring the effects of community‐based human rights and pro‐equality education on Bolivian adolescent boys. By privileging the boys’ own voices, the study examines how the boys’ sense of solidarity toward others, derived from the citizenship duties and collegiality emphasised in non‐governmental workshops, impacted their commitment to gender equality. Research implications include the importance of educating young males on females’ rights and listening to the boys’ views on the resulting progress and remaining challenges regarding the attainment of sustainable gender equality in social spheres and public policies.     

Explaining Family Change and Variation: Challenges for Family Demographers

Twenty years ago, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a request for proposals that resulted in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), a unique survey valuable to a wide range of family scholars. This paper describes the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of family demographers to build on the progress enabled by the NSFH and many other theoretical and methodological innovations. Our work, also supported by NICHD, will develop plans for research and data collection to address the central question of what causes family change and variation. We outline the group's initial assessments of orienting frameworks, key aspects of family life to study, and theoretical and methodological challenges for research on family change. Finally, we invite family scholars to follow our progress and to help develop this shared public good.