Partisan Reinforcement and the Poor: The Impact of Context on Explanations for Poverty*

Objective. Past research has demonstrated that Americans view poverty in racial terms, and that they often blame the poor for their situation. This article's objective is to determine if local contexts can influence these views. Methods. Synthesizing racial and political theories of contextual effects, I use two nationally representative surveys to explore Americans' explanations for poverty. Results. People living in areas where the poor are mostly white are less likely to attribute poverty to the failings of the poor themselves, as theories of racial threat would predict. However, a second finding is stronger: the percentage of the county that voted Republican in the last election consistently predicts less structural and more individualistic explanations of poverty. Conclusions. Local processes of partisan reinforcement play a key role in shaping explanations of poverty.     

Racing to Theory or Retheorizing Race? Understanding the Struggle to Build a Multiracial Identity Theory

Empirical research on the growing multiracial population in the United States has focused largely on the documentation of racial identification, analysis of psychological adjustment, and understanding the broader political consequences of mixed-race identification. Efforts toward theory construction on multiracial identity development, however, have been largely disconnected from empirical data, mired in disciplinary debates, and bound by historically specific assumptions about race and racial group membership. This study provides a critical overview of multiracial identity development theories, examines the links between theory and research, explores the challenges to multiracial identity theory construction, and proposes considerations for future directions in theorizing racial identity development among the mixed-race population.     

Individuals' Estimates of the Risks of Death: Part I—A Reassessment of the Previous Evidence

It is widely argued that individuals have biased perceptions of health and safety risks. A reconsideration of the best-known evidence suggests that this view is the erroneous result of a failure to consider the implications of scarce information. Our findings imply that the hypothesis that people make unbiased estimates of hazard rates fails to be rejected by the very data that were initially used to reject it. Thus, we are able to reconcile the alleged existence of widespread bias in risk perception with other findings that such bias is less apparent in the case of job-related hazards. The seeming bias in estimating population-average death rates and the lack of such bias in assessing job risks are two manifestations of the same behavior, which is the optimal acquisition of costly information.     

Medical Practice under Managed Care: Cost-control Mechanisms and Impact on Quality of Service

The paper investigates the US experience of Managed Care. It describes the cost controlling measures and the new modes of payment that were implemented along with managed Care. Using theory and field surveys, it reviews how these measures have affected physician practices. The paper also investigates their impact on the quality of health services.     

Modeling U‐Shaped Exposure‐Response Relationships for Agents that Demonstrate Toxicity Due to Both Excess and Deficiency

Essential elements such as copper and manganese may demonstrate U‐shaped exposure‐response relationships due to toxic responses occurring as a result of both excess and deficiency. Previous work on a copper toxicity database employed CatReg, a software program for categorical regression developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to model copper excess and deficiency exposure‐response relationships separately. This analysis involved the use of a severity scoring system to place diverse toxic responses on a common severity scale, thereby allowing their inclusion in the same CatReg model. In this article, we present methods for simultaneously fitting excess and deficiency data in the form of a single U‐shaped exposure‐response curve, the minimum of which occurs at the exposure level that minimizes the probability of an adverse outcome due to either excess or deficiency (or both). We also present a closed‐form expression for the point at which the exposure‐response curves for excess and deficiency cross, corresponding to the exposure level at which the risk of an adverse outcome due to excess is equal to that for deficiency. The application of these methods is illustrated using the same copper toxicity database noted above. The use of these methods permits the analysis of all available exposure‐response data from multiple studies expressing multiple endpoints due to both excess and deficiency. The exposure level corresponding to the minimum of this U‐shaped curve, and the confidence limits around this exposure level, may be useful in establishing an acceptable range of exposures that minimize the overall risk associated with the agent of interest.     

Cost sharing on prices for games on graphs

Let \(N=\{1,\dots ,n\}\) be a set of customers who want to buy a single homogenous goods in market. Let \(q_i>0\) be the quantity that \(i\in N\) demands, \(q=(q_1,\dots ,q_n)\) and \(q_S=\sum _{i\in S}q_i\) for \(S\subseteq N\). If f(s) is a (increasing and concave) cost function, then it yields a cooperative game (N, f, q) by defining characteristic function \(v(S)=f(q_S)\) for \(S\subseteq N\). We now consider the way of taking packages of goods by customers and define a communication graph L on N, in which i and j are linked if they can take packages for each other. So if i and j are connected, then a package can be delivered from i to j by some intermediators. We thus admit any connected subset as a feasible coalition, and obtain a game (N, f, q, L) by defining characteristic function \(v_L(S)=\sum _{R\in S/L}f(q_R)\) for \(S\subseteq N\), where S / L is the family of induced components (maximal connected subset) in S. It is shown that there is an allocation (cost shares) \(x=(x_1,\dots ,x_n)\) from the core for the game (\(x_S\le v_L(S)\) for any \(S\subseteq N\)) such that x satisfies Component Efficiency and Ranking for Unit Prices. If f(s) and q satisfy some further condition, then there is an allocation x from the core such that x satisfies Component Efficiency, and \(x_i \le x_j\) and \(\frac{x_i}{q_i} \ge \frac{x_j}{q_j}\) if \(q_i \le q_j\) for i and j in the same component of N.     

A Structural Analysis of the Effectiveness of Buying Firms' Strategies to Improve Supplier Performance

Many manufacturing firms have increased the amount of component parts and services they outsource, while refocusing on their core capabilities. Outsourcing parts and services to independent, external suppliers means that suppliers' performance is increasingly critical to the long‐term success of these buying firms. Buying firms are increasingly using disparate supplier development strategies to improve supplier performance including supplier assessment, providing incentives for improved performance, instigating competition among suppliers, and direct involvement of the buying firm's personnel with suppliers through activities such as training of suppliers' personnel. Using resource‐based theory, internalization theory, and structural equation modeling, we examine the impact of these supplier development strategies on performance. We conclude that direct involvement activities, where the buying firm internalizes a significant amount of the supplier development effort, play a critical role in performance improvement.     

Improving fire risk communication between authorities and micro-entrepreneurs: A mental models study of Ghanaian central market fires

This study conceptualizes how fire management authorities can empower nonexpert public to participate in fire risk communication processes and increase their own responsibilities for managing fire preventive, protective and recovery processes effectively. Drawing narratives from 10 disaster management experts working at government institutions and nine micro-entrepreneurs operating self-sustaining businesses in different merchandized lines in Ghana, we analyzed the data thematically and explored new insights on mental models to generate a two-way fire risk communication model. The findings suggest that fire management authorities planned fire disasters at the strategic level, collaborated with multiple stakeholders, disseminated information through many risk communication methods, and utilized their capabilities to manage fire at the various stages of fire risk communication, but the outcomes were poor. The micro-entrepreneurs sought to improve fire management outcomes through attitude change, law enforcement actions, strengthened security and better public trust building. The study has implications for policymakers, governments, and risk communication authorities of developing countries to strengthen their fire disaster policies to minimize commercial fire incidents and address the damaging effects of fire on people's livelihoods, businesses, properties, and environments. Our proposed two-way fire risk communication model is a new theoretical lens for experts and the nonexpert public to assess each other's beliefs about risk information and manage fire risk communication effectively at all stages.     

The integration of TQM and technology/R&D management in determining quality and innovation performance

This paper presents an empirical study which examines the co-alignment between Total Quality Management (TQM) and technology/research and development (R&D) management in predicting organizational performance in terms of quality and innovation. This study improves our understanding of the relationship between TQM and innovation based on the following two major issues. First, this study contributes to the understanding of the co-alignment between TQM and technology management along with R&D management by bridging the gap between the two areas which are often addressed in a separate fashion. Second, this study also examines the impact of the integration between TQM and technology/R&D on quality and innovation performance which have been considered as the primary sources of a competitive advantage. The empirical data was drawn from 194 Australian organizations and analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. The findings indicate that TQM shows a strong predictive power against quality performance but no significant relationship against innovation performance. On the other hand, technology and R&D management shows a significant relationship with quality performance but at a lower level than that of TQM, and shows much stronger relationship with innovation performance. In addition, there is strong and positive correlation between TQM and technology/R&D management. The major implication of this study is that technology/R&D management is an appropriate resource to be used in harmony with TQM to enhance organizational performance, particularly innovation.     

Nun sag, wie hast du’s mit der Ethik? – Menschenbilder und Ethik im Coaching. Eine Feldstudie

The integration of theory and practice in combination with ethical standards has been clearly defined as a scheme in the field of coaching, but there is still a long way to go. Within the scope of a field study and challenged by numerous perceptions, terms like ‘ethics’ and ‘idea of man’ in the context of coaching have been closely analysed, edited in a structured way and evaluated. These steps were followed by the examination and investigation of the websites of a selected number of providers and trainers of coaching, concerning the extent to which these websites include information on the meta model as well as on the theoretical level according to A. Schreyögg. Based on the rather sobering findings, our study concludes by specifying the cornerstones of a ‘check list’. This tool may help to classify providers and trainers.