Reference model for collaborative management in the automotive industry

Changes in the competitive environment require corporate restructuring, strengthening the relationship between the participants in a supply chain, implementing inter-organisational collaborative actions. Different strategies for collaborative actions render the subject relevant to researchers and managers. Integration, cooperation and partnership are essential to the success of this restructuring; the practices in this subject will be treated as Collaborative Management. The main objective is to analyse and synthesise the requirements of Collaborative Management in the automotive industry. The multicase study begins with an exploratory study to identify the theoretical elements that involve collaborative activity between companies, followed by a multiple case study in order to analyse the collaborative strategies used by companies. With the data collected a reference model will be produced using the Enterprise Knowledge Development methodology under a collaborative management approach. The data will enable the systematic and consistent representation of the collaboration between companies, helping to clarify the Collaborative role, and the integration relationship with the inter-organisational managing strategies.     

Religion, social mobility and education in Scotland

The relationship among religion, education and social mobility in Scotland is analysed statistically using the Scottish Household Survey of 2001 . The large sample size allows much greater statistical power for this purpose than any previous source, and thus allows a more reliable assessment of claims that the stratifying effect of religion in Scotland may have declined. The questions investigated are as follows. What are the religious differences in the distributions of class origins and class destinations, in the movement between these (absolute mobility), and in the association of these (relative mobility, or social fluidity)? Do changes in social fluidity across cohorts vary among people with different religious affiliation? Are there religious differences in the association of origins and education, in the association of education and destinations, or in the role of education in social fluidity, and do any of these vary over cohorts? The conclusions are that, in younger cohorts, there is no religious difference in social status, and that in older cohorts Catholics are generally of lower status than Protestants and the non‐religious. Social fluidity does not, however, vary among religious groups, even for older cohorts, and does not change over time. The reason for convergence in social status of religious groups over time is probably the equalizing of educational attainment among the groups: there is no evidence for any of the cohorts that the labour‐market rewards to education differ by religion.     

“Me Against the World”: Parental Uncertainty Management at Home Following Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Discharge

This study explored the uncertainty management processes experienced by parents at home following their child’s discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 18 mothers and fathers whose children were cared for and “graduated” from NICU units in seven different hospitals from 6 to 183 days (M = 63.58 days). Interviews revealed three types of parental uncertainties: parental role shift, caring through equipment, and adherence to provider advice. Parents relied on three strategies to manage these uncertainties: reorientation, calibrating appropriate responses, and limiting exposure. Findings highlight how parental experiences, communication interactions, and expectations in the NICU complicate parental uncertainties postdischarge and negatively affect parental perceptions of self-efficacy, readiness, and competency. Our findings suggest that family-centered care can be enhanced by redefining discharge as an ongoing process that necessitates distinct uncertainty management practices to negotiate tensions between protecting preterm children and supporting parents.     

Collective Identity in Social Movements: Central Concepts and Debates

The concept of collective identity has been used extensively by social movement scholars seeking to explain how social movements generate and sustain commitment and cohesion between actors over time. Despite its wide application, collective identity is a notoriously abstract concept. This article focuses on the use of the concept in the literature on contemporary social movements and offers a comprehensive theoretical overview. The central elements of collective identity in the social movement literature are developed, and some key differences in interpretations are highlighted. Finally, some contemporary debates around the continuing usefulness and limitations of the concept of collective identity are explored, with a special emphasis on the challenges of applying the concept to movements that define themselves in terms of heterogeneity, diversity and inclusiveness.     

WHY ZERO TOLERANCE OF MISCONDUCT IS UNDESIRABLE IN CONTESTS

Competition can foster misconduct in any circumstance where the organizer of a contest cannot perfectly monitor contestants' actions or when doing so is prohibitively costly. Although misconduct comprises all actions that are contrary to the interest of the organizer, it is not necessarily the case that it is optimal to prohibit all such behavior. In this paper, we determine the equilibrium level of misconduct chosen by players in a symmetric rank‐order tournament between two competitors in which the organizer tolerates some level of misconduct. In addition to showing that zero tolerance may not minimize the level of misconduct in equilibrium, we show that there exists a range of tolerated misconduct where a symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium exists with players cheating (i.e., misconduct above the tolerated level) with some probability. When the gain from misconduct is uncertain and unknown the contest organizer faces a tradeoff: tolerating more misconduct will reduce such behavior when the state of temptation is high, but increase it when temptation is low. (JEL J33, K42)     

Youth talking about news and civic daily life

This paper considers how young people talking about news and politics in their family and peer contexts influences their civic life. The research involved 35 Portuguese youngsters from diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds that were interviewed in 2010, in Portugal, at the onset of the Eurozone crisis. Based on talking and news-mediated contexts and habits, we identified three different profiles: Limitations to empowerment; Civic capital and self-empowerment; and socioeconomic conditions and empowerment. These profiles show how family and peer talking play a central role in strengthening and making a habitus of being an active citizen, even in contexts with limited cultural, economic and social conditions.     

Impulsivity and household indebtedness: Evidence from real life

Using a probit model, we estimated the role of emotional factors in determining household participation in the debt market, after controlling for such traditional economic predictors as age, level of education, income, wealth, and work status. A sample of 445 Caucasian subjects selected among fulltime employees at international asset management companies underwent the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) while skin conductance was recorded, and a series of questions related to their demographic-socio-economic profile. Aside from confirming the role played by traditional explanatory variables commonly used as determinants of household indebtedness, results revealed the significant influence of individuals’ impulsivity in making debt decisions. Impulsivity predicted unsecured debt (i.e. consumer credit), but it was not significantly associated with secured debt (i.e. mortgages). Neither presence of a somatic marker to guide decisions nor performance at the IGT predicted real-life indebtedness decisions in this non-clinical sample. The notion that “non-rational” factors influence debt demand has been largely ignored and raises concerns about the risk of over-indebtedness for impulsive individuals.     

Time Use by Gender and Quality of Life

Italy has no survey that was specifically designed to measure the degree of quality of life for the population, although certain other surveys exist which contribute useful information on the issue. This paper will concentrate on the potential of using existing sample surveys and on initial studies carried out starting from the Time Use survey conducted by the National Statistical Institute in 1989.Daily activities are the key factor when analysing a person's quality of life, however, these must also be considered in context. First and foremost this context is the household, within which each person carries out more or less defined roles. The roles covered are, in fact, a crucial variable when evaluating each person's quality of life. This angle of obsevation is particularly instructive when seen in terms of developments from a gender standpoint. Interpreting a woman's lifestyle according to the presence of symmeetry of asymmetry of roles, accompanying this analysis with one covering subjective perception of satisfaction as to daily activities, is an essential approach for determining the real satisfaction derived from the different aspects of a person's daily life. In addition to conventional indicators, newly conceived indicators taking into account the division of roles can be of great help when carrying out this kind of study. In this sense the analysis of individual time use in relation to household time use represents a significant step forward when studying quality of life.     

An approximation algorithm for the maximum spectral subgraph problem

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - Modifying the topology of a network to mitigate the spread of an epidemic with epidemiological constant $$\lambda $$ amounts to the NP-hard problem of...