The Multiple Control of Verbal Behavior

Amid the novel terms and original analyses in Skinner's Verbal Behavior, the importance of his discussion of multiple control is easily missed, but multiple control of verbal responses is the rule rather than the exception. In this paper we summarize and illustrate Skinner's analysis of multiple control and introduce the terms convergent multiple control and divergent multiple control. We point out some implications for applied work and discuss examples of the role of multiple control in humor, poetry, problem solving, and recall. Joint control and conditional discrimination are discussed as special cases of multiple control. We suggest that multiple control is a useful analytic tool for interpreting virtually all complex behavior, and we consider the concepts of derived relations and naming as cases in point.     

401(k) plan asset allocation, account balances, and loan activity in 2010

THE BULK OF 401(K) ASSETS CONTINUED TO BE INVESTED IN STOCKS: On average, at year-end 2010, 62 percent of 401(k) participants' assets were invested in equity securities through equity funds, the equity portion of balanced funds, and company stock. Thirty-three percent were in fixed-income securities such as stable value investments and bond and money funds. SEVENTY PERCENT OF 401(K) PLANS INCLUDED TARGET-DATE FUNDS IN THEIR INVESTMENT LINEUP AT YEAR-END 2010: At year-end 2010, 11 percent of the assets in the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database were invested in target-date funds and 36 percent of 401(k) participants held target-date funds. Also known as lifecycle funds, they are designed to offer a diversified portfolio that automatically rebalances to be more focused on income over time. MORE NEW OR RECENT HIRES INVESTED THEIR 401(K) ASSETS IN BALANCED FUNDS, INCLUDING TARGET-DATE FUNDS: For example, at year-end 2010, 44 percent of the account balances of recently hired participants in their 20s were invested in balanced funds, compared with 42 percent in 2009, and about 7 percent in 1998. A significant subset of that balanced fund category is target-date funds. At year-end 2010, 35 percent of the account balances of recently hired participants in their 20s were invested in target-date funds, compared with 31 percent at year-end 2009. 401(K) PARTICIPANTS CONTINUED TO SEEK DIVERSIFICATION OF THEIR INVESTMENTS: The share of 401(k) accounts invested in company stock continued to shrink, falling by more than a percentage point (to 8 percent) in 2010, continuing a steady decline that started in 1999. Recently hired 401(k) participants contributed to this trend: They tended to be less likely to hold employer stock. PARTICIPANTS' 401(K) LOAN BALANCES DECLINED SLIGHTLY IN 2010: In 2010, 21 percent of all 401(k) participants who were eligible for loans had loans outstanding against their 401(k) accounts, unchanged from year-end 2009, and up from 18 percent at year-end 2008. Loans outstanding amounted to 14 percent of the remaining account balance, on average, at year-end 2010, compared with 15 percent at year-end 2009. Loan amounts outstanding declined slightly from those in the past few years. THE YEAR-END 2010 AVERAGE ACCOUNT BALANCE IN THE DATABASE WAS 3.4 PERCENT HIGHER THAN THE YEAR BEFORE, BUT MAY NOT ACCURATELY REFLECT THE EXPERIENCE OF TYPICAL 401(K) PARTICIPANTS IN 2010: To understand changes in 401(k) participants' average account balances, it is important to analyze a sample of consistent participants. As with previous EBRI/ICI updates, analysis of a sample of consistent 401(k) participants (those that have been in the same plan since 2003) is expected to be published in 2012.     

A post-crisis assessment of retirement income adequacy for Baby Boomers and Gen Xers

DETERMINING THOSE "AT RISK" OF INSUFFICIENT RETIREMENT INCOME: The analysis in this paper was designed to answer two questions: 1) What percentage of U.S. households became "at risk" of insufficient retirement income as a result of the financial market and real estate crisis in 2008 and 2009? 2) Of those who are at risk, what additional savings do they need to make each year until retirement age to make up for their losses from the crisis? The results are from the 2010 EBRI Retirement Security Projection Model by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. KEY FINDINGS: Range at risk: The percentage of households that would not have been "at risk" without the 2008-2009 crisis but that ended up "at risk" varies from a low of 3.8 percent to a high of 14.3 percent. 50-50 chance of adequacy: Looking at all Early Boomer households that would need to save an additional amount (over and above the savings already factored into the baseline model), the median percentage of additional compensation for these households desiring a 50 percent probability of retirement income adequacy would be 3.0 percent of compensation each year until retirement age to account for the financial and housing market crisis in 2008 and 2009. 90 percent chance of adequacy: Looking at all Early Boomer households that would need to save an additional amount (over and above the savings already factored into the baseline model), the median percentage of additional compensation for these households desiring a 90 percent probability of retirement income adequacy would be 4.3 percent of compensation. Range of adequacy: Looking only at Early Boomer households that would need to save an additional amount (over and above the savings already factored into the baseline model), that had account balances in defined contribution plans and IRAs as well as exposure to the real estate crisis in 2008 and 2009 shows a median percentage for of 5.6 percent for a 50 percent probability and 6.7 percent for a 90 percent probability of retirement income adequacy.     

Knowledge dissemination in operations management: Published perceptions versus academic reality

The channels for knowledge generation and dissemination in the business disciplines are many: presenting research at conferences, writing books, distributing working papers, offering insights in society newsletters, giving invited talks, publishing studies in academic journals, and many other venues, including even blogs and perhaps Facebook^®. But the most important venue is probably published research in “top-level” academic journals. In the discipline of Operations Management, many studies and lists have been published that attempt to determine which of these journals are supposedly the “top” according to either citation analyses, the opinion of recognized experts, author affiliations, bibliometric studies, and other approaches. These lists may then, in turn, be used in different degrees to evaluate research. However, what really counts is what the academic institutions actually use for guidance in evaluating faculty research. Based on a new source of ranking data from AACSB-accredited schools, we compare published journal-ranking studies against that of academe to determine the degree to which the studies reflect academic “reality”. We present rankings of OM journals based on this new source of data and on an aggregate of the stream of published studies, and evaluate their consistency.     

Institutional transitions,global mindset,and EMNE internationalization

Recently revised theoretical explanations of the internationalization process have been offered to specifically account for the propensity of Emerging Market Multinationals (EMNEs) to engage in accelerated internationalization. However, this literature stream has yet to consider how the fundamental institutional transitions occurring in emerging markets promote the individual and organizational level global mindset that helps account for this accelerated, proactive international expansion. Our dynamic multi-level conceptual framework examines the influences of both the home country institutions and intra-organizational mindsets on the development of EMNE outward FDI decision making. This framework contributes to extant literature by integrating conceptualizations of national culture with the informal and formal institutions offered by institutional theory, while examining how fundamental shifts in these influence the intra-organizational context. Furthermore, our conceptual framework adopts a multi-level perspective of global mindset as an antecedent of firm decision making and adds to the global mindset literature by arguing that institutional transition is a macro level antecedent of global mindset.     

WIP inventories in the simultaneous determination of optimal production and purchase lot sizes

This paper studies an integrated production and purchasing lot sizing model with work-in-process WIP inventory. In this model, the single product is made in a multiprocess manufacturing system. The raw materials are procured from outside sources and are converted gradually into the product. A solution procedure is developed to simultaneously find the optimal lot sizes for the product and its raw materials and the corresponding total relevant cost. It is shown that if the cost of WIP inventory is considered in the production lot size computation, the optimal lot sizes of the product as well as those of the raw materials could be altered significantly.     

More social movements or fewer? Beyond political opportunity structures to relational fields

If social movements are an attempt by “outsiders” to gain leverage within politics, then one might expect the global spread of democracy to reduce social movement activity. This article argues the reverse. Granted, many past social movements, such as women's rights and civil rights, were efforts to empower the disenfranchised. However, this is not typical. Rather, social movements and protest tactics are more often part of a portfolio of efforts by politically active leaders and groups to influence politics. Indeed, as representative governance spreads, with the conviction by all parties that governments should respond to popular choice, then social movements and protest will also spread, as a normal element of democratic politics. Social movements should therefore not be seen as simply a matter of repressed forces fighting states; instead they need to be situated in a dynamic relational field in which the ongoing actions and interests of state actors, allied and counter-movement groups, and the public at large all influence social movement emergence, activity, and outcomes.     

Behind the curtain: Julian Simon's manipulation of immigration studies

The Cato Institute-published study by Julian Simon,Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts (1995), is a fifty page amalgam of Simon's analysis, extracts from studies by other immigration researchers, and tables and charts that might intimidate some readers into believing that it is a work of original scholarship and represents new academic research findings on the effects of immigration. Rather it is a repackaging of arguments and selective earlier data, often out of date or meaningless because of the way that it is selected and manipulated.