Anality: News From the Front

“Anality: News From the Front” is a critical commentary on Jeffrey Guss's (this issue) paper, “The Danger of Desire: Anal Sex and the Homo/Masculine Subject” and Stephen Botticelli's “Clinical Example.” In her analysis of Guss's argument, Sedgwick situates the dangerous potential of transgressive anal desire as “a revolutionary flash-point to be sought out and exploited” and highlights what she views as Guss's underlying assumption: that “danger is now altogether a thing to be decried and avoided.” Her response to Botticelli is a lively imagined relationship to Botticelli as a therapist, based on his clinical observations documented in “Clinical Example.”     

Operations Strategy Research in the POMS Journal

In this paper, we examine the operations strategy literature in the POMS journal to determine what has been learned and to suggest new directions for further study in this important area of research. Our review of this literature resulted in the selection of thirty‐one relevant articles, many of which draw upon multiple theoretical perspectives. We identify eight such theoretical perspectives, and go on to classify these perspectives in terms of the scope of inquiry employed in the research (focused versus aggregated) and the researcher's assumptions about choice processes (behavioral versus rational). In doing so, we show that this body of work is dominated by papers that draw upon theoretical perspectives enabling a more holistic scope of inquiry, with a bias towards a view of strategy as a highly rational process. Building on our systematic review and integration of the literature, we suggest multiple areas for future research.     

White Flight and the Presence of Neighborhood Nonprofit Organizations: Ethno-racial Transition,Poverty, and Organizational Resources

A growing body of evidence suggests that urban neighborhoods of color experience a dearth of institutional resources, including parks and social services. Yet, little is known of how a key process in the creation and maintenance of racially and ethnically segregated neighborhoods—the flight of whites from integrating neighborhoods—influences the availability of nonprofit human services. Drawing insights from the place stratification perspective and the sociological study of residential segregation by race and ethnicity, we develop hypotheses on the relationship between white flight and nonprofit presence, and test them with a dataset that combines census tract data with data on all nonprofit human service organizations in Los Angeles County in 2001 and 2011. Consistent with the place stratification perspective, we find that white flight is negatively associated with the presence of nonprofit human services after controlling for neighborhood structural characteristics. However, the expectation that the negative effect of white flight on organizational numbers is stronger in poor neighborhoods than in nonpoor neighborhoods is not supported. The negative association between white flight and the presence of nonprofits is equally as pronounced in neighborhoods with low and high levels of poverty.     

Performance Metric Portfolios: A Framework and Empirical Analysis

The widespread adoption of supply chain management principles suggests that managers recognize the importance of evaluating operational decisions holistically. However, it is often difficult to link specific operational practices to strategic level outcomes and in turn to corporate financial results. This presents problems for both managers and academic researchers attempting to justify the often high cost of operational improvement initiatives in terms of objective accounting metrics. This study provides evidence that it is possible to demonstrate linkages between carefully chosen portfolios of tactical, strategic, and financial metrics. Survey data from 118 manufacturers are used to evaluate hypotheses linking multilevel metrics of performance across three well‐established strategic foci. We present portfolios of metrics drawn from the literature and from the Supply Chain Counciľs supply‐chain operations reference model and related design and customer chain models. Our analysis suggests that metric portfolios in which tactical metrics are designed to match strategic‐level metrics, based on alignment with a specific strategic focus, provide clearer mechanisms for understanding performance linkages.     

Stressful and positive experiences of women who served in Vietnam

Experiences of women who served during the Vietnam War have been described in interviews/anecdotal reports but rarely in empirical literature. Potential positive (versus negative) aspects of service or its impact on well-being are seldom considered. We describe stressful and positive experiences reported by approximately 1,300 female military personnel, Red Cross workers, and others deployed to Vietnam. Prominent stressful (e.g., negative living/working conditions) and positive (e.g., interpersonal relationships) themes and differences based on trauma history, Vietnam experiences, and group membership are explored. We evaluate associations between themes and psychological well-being. Findings provide insight into experiences of this understudied group of women.     

Associations Between Verbal Reasoning,Normative Beliefs About Aggression,and Different Forms of Aggression

The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of sex, verbal reasoning, and normative beliefs on direct and indirect forms of aggression. Three scales from the Peer Estimated Conflict Behavior Questionnaire, Verbal Reasoning tests, and an extended version of Normative Beliefs About Aggression Scale were administered to 663 Estonian students (289 boys and 374 girls; 150 fifth, 264 seventh, and 249 ninth graders; ages 11–16). Self‐ and same‐sex peer ratings were used to assess the frequency of aggression. Associations between study variables were examined using structural equation modeling. Results showed that boys had higher levels of physical and verbal aggression in all the grades and higher levels of indirect aggression in Grade 7. Verbal reasoning predicted negatively all the forms of aggression, except for indirect aggression in Grade 7. Normative beliefs had a positive effect on all three forms of aggression in Grade 7 and Grade 9.     

A Cognitive‐Affective Scale for Hurricane Risk Perception

The aim of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measure of hurricane risk perception. The utility of such a measure lies in the need to understand how people make decisions when facing an evacuation order. This study included participants located within a 15‐mile buffer of the Gulf and southeast Atlantic U.S. coasts. The study was executed as a three‐wave panel with mail surveys in 2010–2012 (T₀ baseline N = 629, 56%; T₁ retention N = 427, 75%; T₂ retention N = 350, 89%). An inventory based on the psychometric model was developed to discriminate cognitive and affective perceptions of hurricane risk, and included open‐ended responses to solicit additional concepts in the T₀ survey. Analysis of the T₀ data modified the inventory and this revised item set was fielded at T₁ and then replicated at T₂. The resulting scales were assessed for validity against existing measures for perception of hurricane risk, dispositional optimism, and locus of control. A measure of evacuation expectation was also examined as a dependent variable, which was significantly predicted by the new measures. The resulting scale was found to be reliable, stable, and largely valid against the comparison measures. Despite limitations involving sample size, bias, and the strength of some reliabilities, it was concluded that the measure has potential to inform approaches to hurricane preparedness efforts and advance planning for evacuation messages, and that the measure has good promise to generalize to other contexts in natural hazards as well as other domains of risk.     

Une privatisation inédite de la norme : le cas de la politique comptable européenne

EU member states have, for a long time, been harmonizing their accounting rules in order to facilitate comparisons among countries. A new regulation in 2002 has suddenly sped up this process. Under it, companies quoted in the stock exchange are, since 2005, required to comply with the standards set by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), a private body without any public mandate. After trying to harmonize its members’ standards, the EU’s decision to resort to private subcontracting is even more puzzling given the Union’s lack of any statutory control over the IASB. In this impressive case of the privatization of a regulatory process, attention is focused on the incorporation of IASB standards in EU law and on the structure and governance of this board. This transfer of power is much broader than usual forms of delegation to the private sector. Although several reasons underlie this relinquishment of public authority, the primary one lies within the EU itself.