Reproducing women's nature: media constructions of IVF and related issues

This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the way the Australian press constructed the issues related to conceptive technologies (IVF and IVF-surrogacy particularly) during the period when the technologies were most visibly controversial. It asks how medical technology, the profession, ethical debates and research were presented, focussing on the representation of women's bodies, ‘motherhood’, and consumerist conceptions of medical solutions to infertility. Moral, ethical and political issues, including feminist critiques of conceptive technologies and medical power were found to be presented in limited and partial ways - by the ‘medical-miracle’ (human interest) or the ‘experts-debate-legal-issues’ genres of press report. In text and in photographs, the press showed mothers and babies as the (positive) products of technology. Women were shown reacting, in emotional terms, to the productive power of technology. Men were active, protective, expert, and the source of rational, abstract talk. The press relied heavily on proponents of the technologies for their news stories. The results are discussed in terms of Foucault's general analysis of the history of discourses of sexuality and feminist critiques of conceptive technologies.     

Headquarters involvement,socialization, and entrepreneurial behaviors in MNC subsidiaries

Headquarters of multinational corporations can be involved in their subsidiaries and help with the development and transfer of innovative ideas. However, headquarters involvement might not always be desired or needed, and it can thus be perceived as interference with local activities, potentially reducing local willingness to go the extra mile. We address the lack of knowledge about subsidiary manager behavior by answering the following question: How does headquarters involvement influence the proactive behavior of subsidiary managers to push for new and innovative ideas? Using data from 120 top managers in subsidiaries of multinational corporations, we find that the negative relationship between headquarters involvement and their subsidiary managers' support for initiatives can be reduced when socialization mechanisms such as a common corporate culture or rotation programs are put in place.     

The Promise of Prediction Contests

This article examines the prediction contest as a vehicle for aggregating the opinions of a crowd of experts. After proposing a general definition distinguishing prediction contests from other mechanisms for harnessing the wisdom of crowds, we focus on point-forecasting contests—contests in which forecasters submit point forecasts with a prize going to the entry closest to the quantity of interest. We first illustrate the incentive for forecasters to submit reports that exaggerate in the direction of their private information. Whereas this exaggeration raises a forecaster's mean squared error, it increases his or her chances of winning the contest. And in contrast to conventional wisdom, this nontruthful reporting usually improves the accuracy of the resulting crowd forecast. The source of this improvement is that exaggeration shifts weight away from public information (information known to all forecasters) and by so doing helps alleviate public knowledge bias. In the context of a simple theoretical model of overlapping information and forecaster behaviors, we present closed-form expressions for the mean squared error of the crowd forecasts which will help identify the situations in which point forecasting contests will be most useful.     

Stationarity and invertibility regions for low order starma models

The building of STARMA, space-time autoregressive moving average, models requires a working knowledge of the conditions under which a particular model represents a stationary process. Constraints on the parameter space that ensure stationarity are developed for all STARMA models of autoregressive temporal order le*ss than or equal to two and spatial order less than or equalto one when the model form utilizes scaled weights. Invertibility conditions for these same models are also given.     

Utilizing research in professional practice

A review of the rehabilitation, disability studies, and allied health literature suggests the presence of numerous factors that impede the utilization of research by practitioners. The purpose of this article is to describe these factors and offer potential solutions that could enable rehabilitation professionals to integrate research findings into their practice. Specifically, the authors recommend strategies to (a) contextualize research throughout pre-service curricula, (b) establish researcher-stakeholder partnerships, (c) increase the accessibility of research to practitioners, and (d) establish professional and peer support for implementing research in field practice.     

Reliability in rehabilitation measurement

The article examines reliability as a key component of the psychometric properties of tests and inventories. What is reliability, types of reliability, why is reliability important, and other reliability issues are addressed in a manner that will help Work readers to better understand and apply psychometric considerations in the context of rehabilitation research. The authors contend that reliability is an essential condition for the psychometric soundness of measurement instruments that are used in rehabilitation research and practice.     

The basics of nonparametric statistics

This article introduces readers to the data analytic sub-paradigm of nonparametric statistics. The authors begin with an explanation of how and under what circumstances nonparametric statistics are used, then describe specific nonparametric techniques which are commonly used in social science research. Examples from the contemporary rehabilitation literature are provided throughout the article.     

The written word: literature and leadership

Explore what the current literature is saying about great leaders and leadership. Among the learnings: silence can hurt your organization, story telling is critical for inspiring employees and great leaders must be fearless.