Consumer trust in B2C e-Commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-Products and e-Services

Reducing social uncertainty—understanding, predicting, and controlling the behavior of other people—is a central motivating force of human behavior. When rules and customs are not sufficient, people rely on trust and familiarity as primary mechanisms to reduce social uncertainty. The relative paucity of regulations and customs on the Internet makes consumer familiarity and trust especially important in the case of e-Commerce. Yet the lack of an interpersonal exchange and the one-time nature of the typical business transaction on the Internet make this kind of consumer trust unique, because trust relates to other people and is nourished through interactions with them.This study validates a four-dimensional scale of trust in the context of e-Products and revalidates it in the context of e-Services. The study then shows the influence of social presence on these dimensions of this trust, especially benevolence, and its ultimate contribution to online purchase intentions.     

Beyond Planning:: Strategies for Successfully Implementing Strategic Decisions

This article brings strategy back to managers and their organizations. It argues and demonstrates empirically that what managers do, and the kind of organization they lead, matter in terms of achieving stated objectives. Managerial action involves a set of activities from assessing the problem to prioritising action, and takes place within an organizational context which has two important elements for decision-making. First, organizations have an accumulated stock of experience, and the more managers can access and utilise this experience base the better. Secondly, the culture and structure of an organization may exhibit more or less readiness for the changes that decisions bring about, and contexts less ready for change pose problems for managers in the implementation of decisions.This long-term study of 55 decisions in UK firms shows that careful managerial planning does not of itself guarantee successful outcomes: the organizational context is crucial in framing actions and influencing achievement, and decisions may send a firm on a trajectory beyond the point at which it can plan with confidence. Where experience and readiness are strong, decisions achieve stated objectives—where both are lacking, decisions tend to fail. But, as examination of two illustrative cases indicates, strength in either domain may be enough: sound experience may win out in comparatively unreceptive situations, and decisions may still succeed where experience is lacking but the organization is ready for change. The article closes with some implications for managers.     

一种新的高分辨定位去噪方法

高分辨定位技术在近几年得到人们的广泛注意,在这方面的研究工作相当活跃。本文提出一种新的多目标阵列接收信号协方差矩阵的去噪方法,并对结果进行了计算机模拟。     

Bayesian adjustment for unidirectional misclassification in ordinal covariates

In this paper, we study the identification of Bayesian regression models, when an ordinal covariate is subject to unidirectional misclassification. Xia and Gustafson [Bayesian regression models adjusting for unidirectional covariate misclassification. Can J Stat. 2016;44(2):198–218] obtained model identifiability for non-binary regression models, when there is a binary covariate subject to unidirectional misclassification. In the current paper, we establish the moment identifiability of regression models for misclassified ordinal covariates with more than two categories, based on forms of observable moments. Computational studies are conducted that confirm the theoretical results. We apply the method to two datasets, one from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), and the other from Translational Research Investigating Underlying Disparities in Acute Myocardial infarction Patients Health Status (TRIUMPH).     

在粤印度人状况初探

在粤印度人( 主要是生活在珠三角的印度人) 和整个在华的印度人一样,是一个非常独特的群体。他们以自己特有的方式生活、工作、学习或拓展自己的生意,一直保持着自己独特的生活方式和行为方式,坚持自己的文化特点,在各方面都显示出自己鲜明的特征。印度人在华的商业成功或在中国获得的机会吸引了更多的印度人来到中国。在华印度人,尤其是在粤印度人的人数将会不断增长,中、印通婚的人数也会不断地增加。这对中、印两国关系的方方面面均会产生重大的影响。     

Exercising Privilege: The Cyclical Reproduction of Capital through Swim Club Membership

According to cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu, social class is defined by the interplay and operation of various forms of capital, within the set of durable and objective relations in which the classed subject is located. Informed by Bourdieu's understanding of social class, this article details the empirical dimensions of upper‐middle‐class familial involvement at the Valley View Swim and Tennis Club. An institution prefigured on the practice and development of important physical skills, Valley View represents a site for the complex interplay of capitals (economic, social, cultural, and physical) complicit in the preservation and reproduction of members' upper‐middle‐class habitus, and corresponding elevated and privileged social status. Specifically, we discuss the findings of ethnographic fieldwork focused on the acquisition, transmission, and conversion of economic, social, cultural, and physical capital in and through member families' club involvement. We argue that Valley View operates as a distinctive cultural field, wherein embodied techniques and expressions of class‐based power and privilege contribute to the reproduction of social class differences, boundaries, and hierarchies, in such a way as to render them natural, and largely unacknowledged, effects of being.     

唐国史中的史实遮蔽与形象建构——以玄宗先天二年政变书写为中心

先天二年政变是玄宗最终掌握最高权力的惊险一跃,而这一事件牵涉到玄宗与睿宗父子间激烈的权力争夺,因此唐代史官在国史中对这一事件进行了全面的讳饰。然而以张说所作的郭元振《行状》为切入点,结合相关文献记载,则可展示玄宗与睿宗及太平公主在政变之前激烈的政治较量、七月三日政变当天的整个过程,同时揭示政变后玄宗通过削弱政变功臣郭元振的权柄、最终掌握所有权力的真相。对于这场政变全方位的探索,显示唐代国史的书写通过遮蔽政治事件的关键性细节、重塑参与其中的政治人物,从而使史书记载最终符合其"政治正确"的逻辑。     

Unconditional government social cash transfer in Africa does not increase fertility

Among policymakers, a common perception surrounding the effects of cash transfer programmes, particularly unconditional programmes targeted to families with children, is that they induce increased fertility. We evaluate the Zambian Child Grant Programme, a government unconditional cash transfer targeted to families with a child under the age of 5 and examine impacts on fertility and household composition. The evaluation was a cluster randomized control trial, with data collected over 4 years from 2010 to 2014. Our results indicate that there are no programme impacts on overall fertility. Our results contribute to a small evidence base demonstrating that there are no unintended incentives related to fertility due to cash transfers.