INVENTORY DECISIONS UNDER INFLATIONARY CONDITIONS

The standard approach to inventory policy ignores the effect of inflation. This paper investigates a model that includes both inflationary trends and time discounting. The paper compares this model with the standard EOQ model and the analysis for a one-time change, found in previous literature.     

USING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY TO REDUCE THE BACK-OUT RATE IN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS APPLICATIONS

Schools of Business are interested in improving the quantity and quality of their undergraduate enrollments. For this reason, they often contact applicants who have been accepted in order to make them feel welcome. Telephone calls, follow-up letters and other devices are employed. Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that these should have a positive effect on the percentage of applicants who follow through and actually attend classes, but no empirical evidence exists to prove or disprove this hypothesis. This study reports on the results obtained when two dissonance reducing techniques, a follow-up letter and a copy of a school of business newsletter, were used to increase the percentage of applicants matriculating for the fall semester. These techniques were not successful in achieving this objective and, instead, may have been counter productive.     

DESIGNING INSPECTION STRATEGIES FOR UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENTS

This paper considers the problems of designing inspection strategies for production systems terms in the presence of environmental uncertainty. The framework for determining information priorities to support inspection system planning is presented in the contaxt of a generic production system that encompasses the characteristics of many real-world serial production systems. The impact on the design decision of five key variables is considered: quality of producton processes, quality of inspection procedures, penalty cost for undetected defective units, relative cost of improving process vs. inspection, and shape of the cost functions for process and inspection enhancement. The framework for analysis involves varying factors over two or three orders of magnitude to determine optimal inspection strategies across a wide range of environments These results are used to compare design decisions made in the presence of environmental uncertainty using expected-opportunity-cost and minimization-of-maximum-opportunity-cost approaches. Design strategies are identified for situations ranging from complete lack of knowledge about the environment through increasing levels of information. Information-gathering priorities are established, and the impact on the design decision of this additional information is assayed.     

Influence of Caregiver Substance Dependence and Serious Mental Illness on Children’s Mental Health: Moderating Effects of Social Support

This study examined the relationships between caregiver alcohol dependence, drug dependence, and serious mental illness and internalizing and externalizing behaviors and whether these risks were moderated by social support. The study included 3,225 children ages 2–17 and their current caregivers, who participated in the second cohort of the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Regression analysis indicated that caregiver alcohol dependence, serious mental illness, and social support were significantly associated with internalizing behaviors and caregiver serious mental illness and social support were significantly associated with externalizing behaviors. Results indicated that social support moderated the associations between caregiver alcohol dependence and internalizing and caregiver drug dependence and externalizing behaviors. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Participation and Impact of Poverty‐oriented Public Works Projects in Rural Malawi

This article reports on factors influencing participation in the poverty‐oriented public works programme in rural Malawi and analyses the determinants of the revealed positive socio‐economic impact among the participants. The programme targets poor households through self‐selection by offering a wage below the official minimum for rural areas. The empirical results show that most participants are poor and with little education. Probability of particpation is higher for members of female‐headed households and households with longer periods of food insecurity, excess supply of labour, few assets and reservation wages below the wage offered in the programme. Taking account of selectivity bias, the impact of the programme increases with the gender (female) of participants and the numbers per household participating.     

Do You Do as I Do?: Young Toddlers Prefer and Copy Toy Choices of Similarly Acting Others

Recognizing similarity between one's own and others' actions is important for identifying others with whom to affiliate and from whom to learn. In this study, 40 19‐month‐old toddlers recognized when a puppet chose the same toys as them. Toddlers preferred to affiliate with a puppet who chose the same toys as themselves relative to a puppet who chose other toys and they modified their subsequent behavior by choosing the same toys as that puppet when presented with novel toys. Toddlers' actions were not based on perceivable features of the puppet (e.g., similar accent or language as oneself) or an association between the puppet and the preferred toys (as assessed in a control condition). Results indicate that toddlers identified and recognized the similarity in action choices between themselves and the puppet via comparison between their own and the puppets' actions. Identifying this similarity is critical for children's developing understanding of and engagement in interactions with others.     

Minding the (Information) Gap: What Do Emerging Adult Adoptees Want to Know About Their Birth Parents?

Abstract

The formation of an adoption information gap was examined for a group of 169 emerging adults (M?=?25.0?years) who were adopted as infants. Participants completed interviews and questionnaires at adolescence and emerging adulthood (late teens to 20s). The Adoption Curiosity Pathway model guided research questions about formation of an adoption information gap, which exists when there is a difference between what an adopted person knows and what he or she desires to know regarding his or her adoption. In addition, specific issues were identified about which emerging adults were curious. Differences in these specific issues were examined across gender and openness arrangement with birth parents at emerging adulthood. The most frequently sought information was medical and health history. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the formation of an adoption information gap, which contains the specific items of curiosity, was more likely for those who were less satisfied with the amount of openness with birth parents during both adolescence and emerging adulthood. Implications for practice are presented.     

Parents' Affect,Adolescent Cognitive Representations,and Adolescent Social Development

Prior research regarding the role of parent‐child relationships in children's social development generally has been limited to concurrent or short‐term longitudinal data and has focused primarily on mothers' influence in the early or middle childhood years. Using a multimethod, multiinformant design, the present study extends previous findings by examining whether maternal and paternal affect predicted adolescent social behavior and peer acceptance 2 years later. Both maternal and paternal affect had significant direct and indirect effects (via adolescent cognitive representations of parents) on adolescent negative social behavior as reported by siblings, which in turn predicted decreased peer acceptance as rated by teachers. Findings suggest that both mothers and fathers shape adolescent social development and attest to the importance of exploring multiple pathways that may account for continuity in parent‐child and peer relationships.     

Narrative in Intercultural Education

In this paper, I discuss the power of narrative in intercultural education. Apparently simple tales, anecdotes, and personal accounts all belong in a narrative universe, which interrogates our assumptions about culture, cognition, language, communication, learning and teaching. I argue that stories have much greater significance in learning and teaching than we usually accord them in educational literature and programmes, and can have ramifications for the intercultural relationships in classrooms.