Educational responses to immigrant students in Madrid

During the last few years, changes in the Spanish educational system have had a far reaching impact. Several factors have been critical: (1) the progressive decentralization of education by the government, now a responsibility of regional governments; (2) the extension of compulsory education to the age of 16; and finally (3) the increase in the number of immigrant students, which has significantly added to the existing cultural diversity. The enrolment of immigrant students in Spanish schools is a relatively recent phenomenon (starting 15 years ago) when compared with other European countries. Madrid is the region in Spain with the largest number of students. As most of these students were born outside of Spain, we cannot yet speak of a second generation. The research described here investigated how the educational system in Madrid confronted the challenge of an increasing number of immigrant students. The institutional response was the Madrid Regional Government’s Compensatory Education Regional Plan. This encompasses several measures, which are described here. After a critical analysis of educational policies pertaining to immigrant pupils, the paper suggests ways of overcoming a purely compensatory approach. Intercultural education plays a key role is such considerations.     

The analysis of age-specific fertility patterns via logistic models

In this paper, we introduce logistic models to analyse fertility curves. The models are formulated as linear models of the log odds of fertility and are defined in terms of parameters that are interpreted as measures of level, location and shape of the fertility schedule. This parameterization is useful for the evaluation, and interpretation of fertility trends and projections of future period fertility. For a series of years, the proposed models admit a state-space formulation that allows a coherent joint estimation of parameters and forecasting. The main features of the models compared with other alternatives are the functional simplicity, the flexibility, and the interpretability of the parameters. These and other features are analysed in this paper using examples and theoretical results. Data from different countries are analysed, and to validate the logistic approach, we compare the goodness of fit of the new model against well-known alternatives; the analysis gives superior results in most developed countries.     

Political Psychology of Nonviolent Democratic Transitions in Southeast Asia

This research examined social psychological aspects of nonviolent democratic transitions in Southeast Asia at the close of the 20th century. Researchers interviewed prodemocracy activists who participated in the Philippines' People's Power Revolution, Cambodia's Dhammayietra (Buddhist Walk for Peace), and East Timor's peace and liberation movement. Sets of open-ended vernacular questions were custom-built to fit each country's unique transition to democracy. In addition, the author used as a data source her personal experiences in the Philippines as a leader of street politics during People's Power. Findings show similar social psychological factors across all three politically-transformative episodes in Southeast Asia. Shared characteristics include a history of systemic violence, loosening up of the authoritarian regime, violence toward the prodemocracy activists, spiritual orientations of social commitments, networking-mobilizing skills used to confront an authoritarian state, building a social infrastructure to produce massive force, and conscientizing for active nonviolence .     

The Top-Down/Bottom-Up Controversy from a Constructionist Approach. A Method for Measuring Top-Down Effects Applied to a Sample of Older People

Two different theories, called bottom-up and top-down, were developed to understand the determinants of an individual's satisfaction. Experimental studies didn't provide unanimous results, and confirmed, to different extents, both theories. Aside from these classic theories, a constructionist approach was developed. The purposes of this study were to examine the top-down/bottom-up controversy from a constructionist point of view and to obtain a new method for measuring the top-down effects in different satisfaction judgements. In this approach, an individual's satisfaction is viewed as constructions, evoked by the specific question in its particular context, and made by people using cognitive strategies. This view implies that the correlation between satisfaction judgements may reflect the use of the same strategies, rather than a causal effect. From this point of view, the top-down and bottom-up effects, described by the classic theories, cannot be seen as a pattern of causal links among satisfaction domains; therefore we propose a reinterpretation of these concepts in which they refer to ways used by people to construct their satisfaction judgements. On these grounds, we developed a method to extract the weight of top-down effects from correlation coefficients between satisfaction judgements. Two hypotheses concerning the different weight of top-down processes in the different satisfaction judgements were subsequently developed.These propositions were tested using the data set of 'Outdoor Mobility Survey' which was carried out in Italy on a sample of 600 people, 55--95 years of age, stratified by sex and age. We found different top-down effects in satisfaction judgements that confirm our hypothesis, even if some aspects need further investigation.     

Social mobility in Scotland since the middle of the twentieth century

Extensive mobility between class of origin and class of destination has been a characteristic feature of societies in Europe and North America since the middle of the twentieth century. Most mobility has been upward, and most of that has been explicable by occupational change – by the rise in the proportion of the labour force which works in service‐class jobs and the decline in the proportion in manual jobs. This pattern may now be changing, because parents of younger cohorts (people born since the 1960s) have themselves benefited from upward mobility and so there is less scope for further upward movement by their offspring. The paper uses a large new data source for Scotland to investigate these topics. It finds that there is still a great deal of mobility, and that, although upward mobility still predominates, its amount is lower in younger cohorts than in older. Nevertheless, relative mobility has not changed as upward mobility has declined, just as in earlier studies it was found not to have changed as upward mobility rose. These patterns are similar for men and women.     

Leader vision formation and forecasting: The effects of forecasting extent,resources, and timeframe

Vision formation, and vision articulation, is held to be a central component of leader performance. Less is known, however, about the variables giving rise to viable visions. In the present effort, the impact of forecasting on vision formation was examined. Study participants were asked to write a speech describing their vision for a new school. Prior to writing this speech, participants were asked to forecast the outcomes of vision implementation. It was found that the extent of forecasting, along with forecasting of temporal and resources considerations, influenced the quality of vision statements. Forecasting was improved when people thought about causes, as opposed to goals, and implications, as opposed to facts. The implications of these findings for understanding leader performance in vision formation are discussed.     

Dynamic capabilities and high-tech entrepreneurial ventures’ performance in the aftermath of an environmental jolt

This paper contributes to studies on dynamic capabilities (DCs) by showing that a neglected environmental contingency – i.e. the occurrence of a jolt – shapes the DCs–performance relationship. We focus on high-tech entrepreneurial ventures because these are the firms that jolts affect most; in so doing, we also advance the understanding of DCs in the entrepreneurship field. We argue that, in the aftermath of an environmental jolt, the high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that use internationalization and new product development capabilities to modify their resource configuration and regain environmental fit enjoy better performance. Econometric estimates on a sample of 340 Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures confronting the consequences of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 confirm that separately using these two DCs has a positive performance effect. This effect is stronger for relatively smaller ventures. Interestingly, despite synergies should arise from the combined use of the two DCs, we do not detect any superadditive effects.     

Policies to Attract R&D-related FDI in Small Emerging Countries: Aligning Incentives With Local Linkages and Absorptive Capacities in Chile

Over the last decade we have witnessed an unprecedented growth in the number of cross-border R&D investments towards large emerging countries such as China and India. However, small middle-income countries have played a marginal role as recipients of R&D-related FDI despite increasing policy efforts. In particular, several Latin American countries have recently launched new policy programs with the aim of attracting this kind of investments, but it remains uncertain whether public incentives can be useful to compensate for other locational disadvantages. The case of Chile provides an interesting empirical setting to explore these issues because during the last decade its government has been actively promoting R&D-related FDI through a new policy mix. This article suggests that for national innovation systems to benefit from the attraction of internationally-mobile R&D it is critical for public policies to ensure that appropriate linkages are established with local actors that hold absorptive capacities. Equally important for a small emerging economy like Chile is to prioritize R&D-related FDI in strategic technology niches where the country can realistically attain critical mass.     

Breadth of Vocational Interests: The Role of Career Adaptability and Future Orientation

The authors examined the relationship between career adaptability, future orientation, and vocational interests. Specifically, they tested the role of career adaptability and future orientation in promoting a broader range of vocational interests, based on the principle that experiencing more interests can be useful in giving one's best in multiple occupations and in planning a broad range of career goals. A total of 762 Italian adolescents (383 males, 379 females) participated in the study. Results highlight the mediating role of future orientation in the relationship between 4 career adaptability resources and breadth of vocational interests. These results underscore that specific interventions in career adaptability and future orientation may foster a broader range of vocational interests, providing more opportunity for adolescents to respond to the demands of the current job market.     

International Business and National Culture: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

This literature review analyzes leading international business and management journals from 2000 to 2012 in order to explore the role of national culture in international business research. Through the analysis of the 265 selected articles, the study thematically maps the field and identifies research challenges and opportunities. It reflects on avenues for future research related to both thematic and methodological issues, among them: research focused on the impact of the home/host national culture on internationalization processes (as existing literature mainly focuses on cultural distance); the role to be played by new theoretical frameworks; and the need to consider cultural positions and cultural friction rather than traditional cultural distance when analyzing internationalization decisions.