Broadening the enclave debate: The labor market experiences of Dominican and Colombian men in New York city

This article provides new data on immigrant employment in ethnic firms, in an attempt to go beyond the terms of the ethnic enclave debate as it has developed so far. We contend that enclave research has focused too narrowly on wages. Using data from a survey of Colombian and Dominican immigrants in New York City, we compare enclave, primary, and secondary workers on three types of work-related resources: wages, opportunities for skill acquisition, and access to nonmonetary fringe benefits. We find little evidence that Dominican and Colombia men in the enclave comprise a protected labor market sector. On the contrary, they are disadvantaged with respect to several fringe benefits.An earlier version was presented at the 1990 American Sociological Association meetings.     

Illness career descent in institutions for the elderly

This paper examines the social psychological consequences of illness careers in a retirement facility. As elderly residents' health declines, they experience an illness career descent. This refers to the movement through the social structure of the healthcare facility as a consequence of the downward trajectory of chronic illness. Illness career descent requires the formal relocation of the individual and the informal social consequences of loss of control, stigmatization, and segregation from prior friendship networks. Individuals react in a three-stage manner. At first, residents resist being moved down. Next, there is a negative impact on their self-image as relocated residents accept the evaulation by staff that they have become less competent. Third, they adjust to their new location and enhance their self-image by developing new roles, finding a poor dear, re-evaluating prior stereotypes, and engaging in post-decisional dissonance reduction.The author wishes to express his deepest appreciation to Jacob Climo, Peter Conrad, Stan Kaplowitz, and Shulamit Reinharz for their encouragement and their suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Making Privatization Work: Utilizing a Scorecard Model of Human Resource Strategy

Three-fourths of privatization efforts fail. Analyses of the other one-fourth have overlooked what is arguably the single most important element: successful management of human resources. In establishing the culture of change necessary to effect competitive initiatives and in motivating employees toward innovation and accountability, a scorecard-based human resource strategy is at the center of it all. A discussion of the strategic role of human resource management supporting privatization efforts in general, and of the remarkably successful Charlotte, North Carolina experience in particular, offers important lessons. Detailed here is a rubric of what works and why.     

The Potential Impact of ‘Public Access’ Legislation on Access to Forestry Literature

There have been increasing calls for the United States (U.S.) government’s implementation of broad public access policies mandating free online access to federally funded research. This study examines the potential impact of such a policy on peer-reviewed forestry literature. The authors analyze information about federal government authorship, federal government funding, and U.S. authorship indicated in articles published in five core forestry journals in 2006. The results of the analysis provide evidence that federal public access legislation would have a significant impact on the accessibility of forestry literature published in leading journals in the field.     

Maximum likelihood from spatial random effects models via the stochastic approximation expectation maximization algorithm

We introduce a class of spatial random effects models that have Markov random fields (MRF) as latent processes. Calculating the maximum likelihood estimates of unknown parameters in SREs is extremely difficult, because the normalizing factors of MRFs and additional integrations from unobserved random effects are computationally prohibitive. We propose a stochastic approximation expectation-maximization (SAEM) algorithm to maximize the likelihood functions of spatial random effects models. The SAEM algorithm integrates recent improvements in stochastic approximation algorithms; it also includes components of the Newton-Raphson algorithm and the expectation-maximization (EM) gradient algorithm. The convergence of the SAEM algorithm is guaranteed under some mild conditions. We apply the SAEM algorithm to three examples that are representative of real-world applications: a state space model, a noisy Ising model, and segmenting magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the human brain. The SAEM algorithm gives satisfactory results in finding the maximum likelihood estimate of spatial random effects models in each of these instances.     

Bayesian D-optimal supersaturated designs

We introduce a new class of supersaturated designs using Bayesian D-optimality. The designs generated using this approach can have arbitrary sample sizes, can have any number of blocks of any size, and can incorporate categorical factors with more than two levels. In side by side diagnostic comparisons based on the E(s²)$E(s^2)$ criterion for two-level experiments having even sample size, our designs either match or out-perform the best designs published to date. The generality of the method is illustrated with quality improvement experiment with 15 runs and 20 factors in 3 blocks.     

Lifetime Buy Decisions with Multiple Obsolete Parts

Life‐cycle mismatch occurs when the life cycles of parts end before the life cycles of the products in which those parts are used. Lifetime buys are one tactic for mitigating the effect of part obsolescence, where a quantity of parts is purchased for the remaining life of a product. We extend prior work that determines optimal lifetime buy quantities for one product with one obsolete part by providing an analytic solution and two simple heuristic policies for the optimal lifetime buy quantities when many parts become obsolete over a product's life cycle. We determine which of our two heuristics is most accurate for different product life cycles, which yields a metaheuristic with increased accuracy. That analysis also reveals critical perspectives in making lifetime buy decisions with nonstationary life‐cycle demand patterns.     

Product Design for Life‐Cycle Mismatch

Life‐cycle mismatch occurs when the life cycle of a product does not coincide with the life cycles of the parts used in that product. This is particularly a problem with products that contain electronic components that sometimes have life spans of only two years. The cost of mitigating component obsolescence, which may require redesigning the product, is often considerable. Thus, prudent product design necessitates the selection of electronic components and product architecture, considering the cost of mitigating an obsolete design and other costs related to the design and manufacture of a product. Accordingly, we develop and analyze a model that shows how a product design can be effectively tailored to a particular product's life cycle.     

Connecting the Dots in Public Management: Political Environment, Organizational Goal Ambiguity, and the Public Manager's Role Ambiguity

This article is a systematic effort to study a key theoreticalquestion from the vantage point of public sector organizationalbehavior. Most political science models, with a primary interestin democratic control of bureaucracy, study the political influenceon the bureaucracy from an agency theory perspective. Organizationbehavior literature, on the other hand, is focused largely onthe study of individual-level phenomena in private organizationsand does not incorporate political context as part of explanatorymodels. This article proposes a middle-range theory to "connectthe dots," beginning with disparate sources in the polity influencingorganizational goal ambiguity, which in turn is expected toincrease managerial role ambiguity. An empirical test, usingdata collected from a national survey of managers working instate human service agencies, supports this theoretical model.We find that certain types of political influence have an impacton organizational goal ambiguity, which in turn has a directeffect in increasing role ambiguity and also an indirect effectin increasing role ambiguity through organizational structure.