Innovation as the source of long term economic growth

This paper concerns some economic aspects of innovation particularly as the source of long term growth. Economic history supplies many examples of the rejuvenation of economies which, at various points in time, could legitimately have been considered ‘ageing’. The author asks ‘Could Britain's turn come now?’     

The hard and soft sides of union political money

We reach several conclusions. First, to the extent that soft money per se and issue advertising are the primary targets of campaign-finance reformists, unions contribute little, overall, to the perceived or real problem. Union soft money pales in comparison not only to total interest-group expenditures of this type but also to the hard money that labor dispenses. Moreover, with their relatively limited treasuries, unions are in no position to compete with the corporate sector. It has been estimated that the total assets of labor unions, at the combined local, regional, and national/international levels, barely exceeded $10 billion in 1995 (Masters and Atkin, 1997). Revenues were less than $13 billion.     

The Role of Organizational Size and Industry in Job Quality and Work-Family Relationships

In this study we update analyses of the 1977 QES (Zipp, 1991) using data from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. We use hierarchical linear modeling procedures to partition the variance in a wide variety of indicators of workers' experiences. Most variation was associated with the individual level of analysis, but significant and nontrivial variation also was associated with the organizational and industrial levels. Although workers in smaller organizations reported lower earnings, fewer benefits, and less education than their counterparts in larger organizations, they also reported experiencing less discrimination, better fit between their actual and desired work hours, more supportive work environments and loyalty to their employers, less burnout or interference between work and family, and shorter commute times.     

SPC as a tool for creating a successful business measurement framework

Many companies are trying to get to the bottom of what their main objectives are and what their business should be doing. The new Six Sigma approach concentrates on clarifying business strategy and making sure that everything relates to company objectives. It is vital to clarify each part of the business in such a way that everyone can understand the causes of variation that can lead to improvements in processes and performance. This paper describes a situation where the full implementation of SPC methodology has made possible a visual and widely appreciated summary of the performance of one important aspect of the business. The major part of the work was identifying the core objectives and deciding how to encapsulate each of them in one or more suitable measurements. The next step was to review the practicalities of obtaining the measurements and their reliability and representativeness. Finally, the measurements were presented in chart form and the more traditional steps of SPC analysis were commenced. Data from fast changing business environments are prone to many different problems, such as the short previous span of typical data, strange distributions and other uncertainties. Issues surrounding these and the eventual extraction of a meaningful set of information will be discussed in the paper. The measurement framework has proved very useful and, from an initial circulation of a handful of people, it now forms an important part of an information process that provides responsible managers with valuable control information. The measurement framework is kept fresh and vital by constant review and modifications. Improved electronic data collection and dissemination of the report has proved very important.     

Planning for a university,using interactive forecasting

The benefits of programme review, forward planning and control have been demonstrated at the university-wide level. Within a faculty or department, there is also a clear need for developing and using planning methods which are rationally based and forward looking if appropriate responses to changing social and academic trends are to be made. This paper delineates a number of planning and control variables encountered at the faculty or departmental level, describes the development and use of a computer-based interactive forecasting model, and discusses the advantages and limitations of such models in planning a faculty's progress toward its goals.     

A managerial approach to environmental assessment

The external environment of a corporation is one of the major determinants of its strategy. While this view is readily accepted, the tools to monitor this important determinant are still relatively underdeveloped. The authors have developed a managerial process which fills this gap by enabling an organization to assess its external environment effectively and economically. The approach helps executives identify major forces for strategic change in the market and non-market dimensions of the environment. The relevance of these changes is determined by measuring their impact on the mission and the strategies of the company. The process, furthermore, provides a starting point for assessing an organization's capabilities to respond to these forces for change.     

Cancer risk estimation for mixtures of coal tars and benzo(a)pyrene.

Two-year chronic bioassays were conducted by using B6C3F1 female mice fed several concentrations of two different mixtures of coal tars from manufactured gas waste sites or benzo(a)pyrene (BaP). The purpose of the study was to obtain estimates of cancer potency of coal tar mixtures, by using conventional regulatory methods, for use in manufactured gas waste site remediation. A secondary purpose was to investigate the validity of using the concentration of a single potent carcinogen, in this case benzo(a)pyrene, to estimate the relative risk for a coal tar mixture. The study has shown that BaP dominates the cancer risk when its concentration is greater than 6,300 ppm in the coal tar mixture. In this case the most sensitive tissue site is the forestomach. Using low-dose linear extrapolation, the lifetime cancer risk for humans is estimated to be: Risk < 1.03 x 10(-4) (ppm coal tar in total diet) + 240 x 10(-4) (ppm BaP in total diet), based on forestomach tumors. If the BaP concentration in the coal tar mixture is less than 6,300 ppm, the more likely case, then lung tumors provide the largest estimated upper limit of risk, Risk < 2.55 x 10(-4) (ppm coal tar in total diet), with no contribution of BaP to lung tumors. The upper limit of the cancer potency (slope factor) for lifetime oral exposure to benzo(a)pyrene is 1.2 x 10(-3) per microgram per kg body weight per day from this Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) study compared with the current value of 7.3 x 10(-3) per microgram per kg body weight per day listed in the U.S. EPA Integrated Risk Information System.     

Zentrum und Peripherie im globalen Wissenschaftssystem

We use an experimental design to analyse the effect of symbolic capital of a nation’s higher education system and of single universities on students’ opportunities for international mobility. Fake applications of international doctoral students were sent to German sociology professors, who were asked to serve as supervisors during a research visit in Germany. Our fake applicants come from four different universities: Yale, Pennsylvania State University, National University Singapore, and Vietnam National University Hanoi. The results show that applicants from both US institutions get more positive, more informative and more personal feedback than applicants from Singapore and Vietnam. Moreover, the symbolic capital of a university seems more important than the quality of a specific department, which is problematic in normative terms.     

Research-based service-learning: outcomes of a social policy course

Previous research has found service-learning in undergraduate social policy courses to increase students’ knowledge, skills, values, and competence. The present study utilized a sample of 60 graduate-level social work students who participated in a research-based service-learning (RBSL) project that involved collecting and analyzing data about the extent of payday loan use among bankruptcy filers and reporting results to community partners. Quantitative findings revealed significant increases in students’ personal social responsibility. Qualitative findings shed light on growth in personal social responsibility, civic awareness, policy advocacy, and personal values. Suggestions for future studies using RBSL pedagogy to teach social policy are discussed.     

Prosoziales Arbeitsverhalten: Entwicklung und Überprüfung eines Messinstruments zur Erfassung des freiwilligen Arbeitsengagements

A German version of the Organizational Citizenship Behavior Questionnaire (GOCBQ) is developed and tested. Study 1 was conducted with 150 students working together in 39 project groups. The results show that the internal consistency and test-retest-reliability of the GOCBQ are good. Moreover, the GOCBQ measures a general altruism orientation which can be interpreted as a stable trait. The GOCBQ does neither correlate substantially with demographical variables nor with extroversion or neuroticism. Instead, substantial correlations are registered with mood and group atmosphere. In study 2 results from study 1 were cross-validated with data from 128 voluntary and professional helpers, in study 3 with data from 43 professionals. Implications for future research and applications in working life are discussed.