Effects of Leadership Style,Creativity Technique and Personal Initiative on Employee Creativity

Transformational leadership is assumed to enhance employees' creativity. However, results of meta‐analytic research on the relations between transformational leadership and creativity have fallen short of expectations. The authors argue that, besides leadership style, the creativity technique that a leader employs is an important means of stimulating employees' creativity. In addition, it is assumed that leadership styles and creativity techniques may have different effects, depending on the measure of creativity output (quantitative vs qualitative). Therefore, in an experimental setting, the effects of different creativity techniques (provocation technique vs brainwriting) and leadership styles (transformational vs transactional) on both quantitative and qualitative creativity were examined. Results showed that transformational leadership and provocation technique led to higher levels of qualitative creativity than transactional leadership and brainwriting, respectively. Conversely, transactional leadership and brainwriting were more effective for quantitative creativity. The additional benefit of the provocation technique in qualitative creativity was found to be higher in the transactional leadership condition than in the transformational leadership condition. Moreover, personal initiative made a significant and independent contribution to both qualitative and quantitative creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Adolescent Female Offenders’ Subjective Experiences of How Peers Influence Norm-Breaking Behavior

Delinquent peers have a strong influence on adolescent delinquent behavior. However, few studies have investigated adolescents’, and in particular young females’, own perspectives of the role of peers on their delinquent behavior. The purpose of the present study was to explore how young female offenders described their delinquent behavior and more specifically the role they assign to peer relations in committing or avoiding delinquent acts. Nine female adolescents, sentenced to youth service, were interviewed, and the data was analyzed using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. The results showed that committing crimes and taking drugs with peers were portrayed as a way for the female delinquents to socialize. Delinquent and pro-social activities with peers appear to serve similar developmental functions in the sense that it is described to fulfill the same developmental needs. The young offenders also described collectively created pressures and norms in the peer group as the main contributing factor to their norm-breaking behavior, where they described being both recipients and producers of influence in the group. Another important finding was that the female offenders showed an awareness of the importance of pro-social peers and the need to eliminate delinquent friends from their peer network in order to help them refrain from deviant behavior. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

‘Notorious Beyond Any Other European Woman of Her Generation’: The Case of Count(ess) Sarolta/Sándor Vay

The paper investigates the curious case of the Hungarian Count(ess) Sarolta/Sándor Vay, journalist and writer, but, above all, a notorious gender bender in late nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The article examines her case in the context of the history of European cross-dressing and of narrative transvestism. The author argues that nineteenth-century dandyism provided an effective cultural framework for Vay’s contemporaries to accept her unconventional presence in fin-de-siècle Hungarian society. Moreover, she claims that Vay’s narrative transvestism may also be construed within the cultural phenomenon of dandyism, as her writing practices prove to be further instruments for her self-fashioning. Finally, she concludes that Vay’s gender performance and narrative transvestism become illustrative examples of instances that both frame and confuse accepted cultural patterns, destabilize gender binarism, and participate in its maintenance.     

Effects of parental absence on child labor and school attendance in the Philippines

This paper uses longitudinal data from the Philippines to analyze determinants of children’s time allocation. The estimation method takes into account both the simultaneity of time use decisions, by allowing for correlation of residuals across time uses, and unobservable family heterogeneity, through the inclusion of household fixed effects. Importantly, this improved estimation method leads to different results than when applying the methods previously used in the literature. Girls suffer significantly from the absence of their mother with a reduction in time spent in school that is equivalent to dropping out completely. This effect is substantially larger when controlling for household unobservables than when not. Boys increase time spent working on market related activities in response to an absent father, although this time appears to come out of leisure rather than school or doing household chores. Land ownership substantially increase the time boys spend on school activities, whereas renting land reduces the time girls spend on school. Finally, there does not appear to be a substantial trade-off between time spent on school and work, either in the market or at home.     

Followers' Personality and the Perception of Transformational Leadership: Further Evidence for the Similarity Hypothesis

Managers and supervisors are thought to affect their followers' attitudes and behaviour. Within leadership research, behaviour of leaders and managers is usually considered as the independent variable whilst followers' reactions are considered the dependent variable. In this study, we reverse this order and investigate the degree to which the evaluation of leadership is a result of followers' perceptions and attributions. In order to corroborate and extend previous experimental research, a field study was conducted to analyse the influence of followers' personality and perceived leader personality on followers' perception of leadership within an organizational setting. The results provide further evidence that followers' personality influences the perception of transformational leadership and commitment to the supervisor. Moreover, the perception of leaders' personality was related to the perception of leadership and commitment to the supervisor. The finding that the perception of supervisors' personality mediates both the relationship between followers' personality and the perception of leadership and commitment provides support for the similarity hypothesis. Results are discussed in the light of feedback and leader development.     

Der Wandel der Konsumstruktur in Deutschland – ein Indiz für die Individualisierung von Lebensstilen oder doch die Folge soziodemografischer Entwicklungen?The change of consumption patterns in Germany – an evidence of the individualization of lifestyles or the effect of socio-demographic changes?

Following the results of different empirical studies the consumption patterns of German households changed significantly during the last decades. While this change was attributed to a dissolving correlation between lifestyle and social status for a long time, more and more studies focus on the relationship of lifestyle and socio-demographic criteria again. This report analyses the effects of social composition regarding age, income and households types on the use of income between 1978 and 2008. The results of the decomposition analysis reveal that the socio-demographic components cannot explain the change of consumption patterns in Germany. Rather it seems that different social conditions during socialisation affect lifestyles and should be considered when analysing consumption patterns.     

Using Work Values to Predict Post‐Retirement Work Intentions

Work values might be proximal predictors of individuals' late‐career intentions because they serve as guiding principles for the selection, evaluation, and justification of vocational behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between work values and post‐retirement work intentions. The authors investigated individual work values within the structure of 4 higher order values elaborated on by Schwartz et al. ( 2012 ). Relationships between work values and 4 types of post‐retirement work intentions were examined. Data from 1,071 employees of a German logistics company were used to test the hypotheses. The results of a structural equation model indicated that work values were differentially related to the 4 types of post‐retirement work intentions. The identified work value–work type combinations add to the literature on post‐retirement work. Practice implications for promoting positive individual and organizational outcomes are drawn from the results.     

MEASURING THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MULTINATIONAL FIRMS' FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

Earlier work found evidence for geographic linkages of aggregate foreign direct investment across countries and country‐pairs. From a theoretical point of view, such linkages at the macroeconomic level may root in between‐firm as well as within‐firm linkages and originate from information spillovers across or within firms in exploring unknown markets, and vertical linkages between production plants across different locations within the firm. We use data on the universe of German multinational enterprises (MNEs) to empirically explore how marginal investments at one foreign affiliate depend on investments at other affiliates within the same MNE. The empirical approach employs two channels or modes of cross‐affiliate interdependence: mere geography (capturing horizontal linkages through correlated learning and horizontal competition within the firm) and input–output relationships within or across industries (which capture vertical linkages). Adding to earlier findings at the aggregate level, we find evidence of a significant interdependence of investments within the firm. In the firm‐level data at hand, vertical linkages appear to be more important than horizontal ones. Investments at one location tend to stimulate investments at other locations of the same MNE, particularly if input linkages are strong. The opposite seems to be true for output linkages. Beyond vertical linkages, mere geographic proximity matters only to a minor extent. This suggests that evidence of linkages through geographic closeness at aggregate data levels accrue mainly to reasons of vertical linkages within networks of affiliates. (JEL C31, D22, F21, F23, F68, G31, H32)     

On the construction of optimal experimental designs: a penalty approach

Tn optimal experimental design theory there are well-known situations, in which additional constraints are implied to the design set. These constraints destroy in general the simplex structure of the set of feasible points of the design set. Thus the available iteration procedures for the unrestricted case are no longer applicable.

In this paper a penalty approach is suggested which transforms the restricted problem to the unrestricted case and allows the application of well-known algorithms such as the Fedorov-Wynn-type or the projected gradient procedure.     

The Multi-dimensional Characteristics of Wellbeing: How Different Aspects of Wellbeing Interact and Do Not Interact with Each Other

Because wellbeing is a multi-varied and dynamic phenomenon, social scientists need to better understand how different aspects of people’s wellbeing are tied together and how these ties differ between individuals at one point in time and within individuals over time. The paper outlines a general model that considers the multidimensional structure of wellbeing. We utilize the potential of latent variable modelling on a unique Swedish database: the Panel Survey of Ageing and the Elderly (PSAE). An inclusive and flexible model that considers the interactions between semi-autonomous domains (material resources, health, psychosocial factors, lifestyle, etc.) is developed. Our empirical study is based on cross-sectional PSAE data and focuses on people 55 years or older (N = 5,374). The analysis takes advantage of recent developments in statistical theory in the field of latent variable modelling to bring about a more dynamic and theory confirming analysis of a multifaceted phenomenon such as wellbeing.