Mobile Technology and Boundary Permeability

An extensive review of the literature reveals a lack of insight into why some employees and their families benefit from the adoption of mobile technology while others do not. The paper summarizes the authors' efforts to answer this question. The authors undertook a longitudinal case study of the adoption and use of a BlackBerry Smartphone by 25 professional knowledge workers. Four theoretical lenses were used to help with the data analysis process: boundary theory, the social constructivist view of technology, sensemaking and attribution theory. Analysis of the Time 2 data identified three groups. Segmentors (n = 4) did not use their smartphones outside work hours. Integrators (n = 8), used their smartphones to connect to both work and family anywhere, but not any time (temporally separated work and family roles). Struggling segmentors (n = 13) felt pressured by their organization to use their device 24/7 and did so. The analysis indicates that the relationship between the use of mobile technology and successful boundary management depends on the development of a strategy to manage the device prior to adoption, the ability to change one's strategy to respond to concerns at home, and self‐control.     

A simple approximation of the sampling distribution of least absolute residuals regression estimates

For multivariate regression with a symmetric disturbance distribution, the error in the least absolute residuals estimator is approximately multivariate normally distributed with mean zero and variance matrix λ²(X′X)^?1, where X is the matrix of K explanatory variables and T observations, and λ ²/T is the variance of the median of a sample of size T from the disturbance distribution. The approximate sampling theory is validated by extensive Monte Carlo studies, and some directions of possible refinement emerge.     

Construct Validity of Unsupportive Attributional Style: The Impact of Life Outcome Controllability

Quality of life for individuals and their communities is greatly affected by the degree of altruism expressed when misfortune occurs. The present study investigated the construct validity of an individual differences variable (i.e., unsupportive attributional style) linked to helping behaviour. Unsupportive attributional style (i.e., the tendency to view others' misfortunes as controllable by the victims) is assessed across a number of negative life outcomes of others using the Reasons for Misfortune Questionnaire (RMQ). Modest evidence of unsupportive attributional style at an intermediate level of situation specificity suggested an empirical examination of the situational referents (negative life outcomes of others) of the construct. The present study revealed large variation in the perceived causal controllability of the negative life outcomes on the RMQ. Confirmatory factor analysis of RMQ data (N = 705) revealed that an excellent fit was provided by an attributional style model that included controllable and uncontrollable situation-types. Thus, when perceived controllability of the negative life outcomes of others was included in the definition of unsupportive attributional style, the estimation of individual differences in controllability perceptions was refined considerably. By linking empirically the situational referents for unsupportive attributional style to the construct definition, the present findings demonstrated the ongoing nature of the process of construct validation. It is clear from the present findings that if systematic variation in the situational referents of attributional styles is unaccounted for in construct definition, individual differences in controllability perceptions (i.e., attributional style) will be underestimated.     

Building alternative agri-food networks: Certification,embeddedness and agri-environmental governance

This paper examines the role of certification in alternative agri-food networks (AAFNs), which are in the process of building markets for their produce outside conventional supply chains. Drawing upon recent writing on ‘embeddedness’, we argue that certification provides an important focus for exploring the relationship and tensions between horizontal and vertical dimensions of embedding processes, and thereby understanding the complexities of agri-environmental governance. Through a case study of a group of beef farmers in south-eastern Australia, we investigate how one type of process-based certification—Environmental Management Systems (EMSs)—was used as the basis for constructing an AAFN and selling a premium environmentally certified product. The case study shows that environmental certification had mixed results for this AAFN. For instance, while it represented a useful means of building consumer trust, considerable time and effort was required by producers to target and build a market for the certified product. Producers initially had little to gain financially from a third-party-certified EMS. However, despite the current lack of broad consumer demand for non-organic environmentally certified products, the farmers we interviewed did not reject the EMS process entirely—they used it to realise a range of non-monetary personal and community benefits. We conclude that certification can be a useful strategy for those AAFNs in the process of expanding beyond direct marketing. Nevertheless, the lack of consumer understanding and demand means that certification may be adapted and combined with other producer strategies to meet personal and societal expectations regarding land stewardship.     

Culture in-colour

Culture in-colour is a concept that recognizes that culture is always imbricated in relations of colour as form, structure, or system and in relations of colours. These two regimes – colour and colours – fold back onto and interpenetrate one another to constitute culture in complex, multiple, contradictory, constitutive relations that are potentially open to change. Theorizing culture in-colour draws on and beyond the image of the cyborg to insist on in-colour as neither a thing, a property of an object, nor a neurological process, but an active verb, a lived event: of interminglings and articulations, of repetitions, struggles, rearticulations, and becomings. The Dress, a 2015 controversy over the colour of a dress in an image circulated over the Internet, reveals how colour is typically thought of – as surface, artifice, and ornament; as a scientific fact; and as a neurological phenomenon – and how it is lived affectively. The anxieties produced by The Dress suggest a tension between the typical explanations of how colour matters and the less-accessible, but far more consequential, ways that both colour and colours matter. Colour and colours are often used to designate community belonging, but a closer look at the perceived threat in seeing colour differently reveals an underlying trust both in what colour is and in the reliability of colour to negotiate/constitute community in relations of inclusion, exclusion, and hierarchy. Neuroscientific and technological explanations affectively discipline colour by asserting thingness and sameness, and by erasing the traces of the powerful articulatory work of colour. Yet it is the system of colour itself that makes the dismissal of the significance of colour possible. Acknowledging that we live in-colour demands recognition that not only do we live deeply in-colour, but that different cultures in-colour are possible, that different forms or systems of colour are lived affectively, and that the disciplining of colour can be resisted with effects more open to indeterminateness.     

Psychologist and Physician Interest in Telehealth Training and Referral for Mental Health Services: An Exploratory Study

The current study explored psychological and medical professionals’ interest in videoconferencing telehealth training and mental health telehealth referral. An online survey assessed 782 participants comprised of 669 psychological (45% male, Mean Age = 47.01, SD = 16.82) and 113 medical professionals (58% male, Mean Age = 46.19, SD = 12.40). Z-test analyses indicated that although psychological professionals were statistically more interested in receiving telehealth training, both groups reported some interest. Ranked responses indicated efficacy data, ethical issues, and legal concerns as the most endorsed areas of training interest. Referral concerns were also found. Findings were discussed related to both statistical and clinical significance. Application of findings is discussed related to future work, practice, and program creation. The development of telehealth training programs will provide interested professionals with tools required for practice and may serve as an impetus to increase utilization and/or referral.     

The organisation and practice of corporate planning in the U.K.: Some recent survey results

This article reports some relevant results from a recent survey of the corporate planning practices of a number of leading British organizations. The sample spanned turnovers from £2000m. Within this range, the functional areas involved show considerable variation: for example, 95% of companies perform financial planning, but only 52% production planning. Organization too, quite naturally, displays great variety: thus one company operates with only a single planner whereas another employs thirty. Ratings are quoted for the main advantages and disadvantages of corporate planning as assessed by the chief executives; in general, the benefits dominate.     

The Occupational Structure of Science: a Log-Linear Analysis of the Inter-sectoral Mobility of American Sociologists

The occupational structure of science is conceptualized as consisting of four sectors within which the career patterns of two cohorts of sociologists are examined. Using an origin criterion, receipt of the Ph.D. from an American university, to define the cohorts, we analyze the effects of various factors on sectoral immobility—which has been the norm for three decades—and mobility. In general, structural factors supersede individual differences in explaining observed movement. Moreover, the evidence underscores the "university bias" that has dominated studies of stratification in science. This suggests that the prestige of sociological work and the sectoral contexts in which it is performed be reevaluated, particularly in view of the current glut of the academic sectors.