Grandparents raising grandchildren: negotiating the complexities of role‐identity conflict

The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the experience of grandparents who are raising their grandchildren in New South Wales, Australia. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 34 grandparents and their narratives transcribed and studied using paradigmatic analysis to reveal common themes among the stories told. Identity theory further informed the discussion of these findings. Woven throughout the grandparent narratives is a story of paradox – of experience simultaneously made up of pain/pleasure, myth/reality, inclusion/exclusion, being deserving/undeserving, visible/invisible and voiced/silenced. The findings signal a significant role‐identity conflict for grandparents who are parenting grandchildren. This study points to the need for policy and practice that more closely reflects the complexity of experience associated with the grandparent‐as‐parent role.     

The social structure of leadership and creativity in engineering design teams: An empirical analysis

Creativity is essential for research and development efforts. Unfortunately, little is known about how the role of team leaders determines the team’s creativity. Based on a sample of 39 engineering design teams in the space industry, this study examines the effects of leader position within different flows of communication on team creativity. The results indicate that the balance between holding a central or a peripheral position indeed determines the creativity of such teams. Specifically, very central and very peripheral positions of team leaders within the work-flow and awareness network hamper team creativity, whereas peripheral situated team leaders within the information network propel the creativity. In addition, team leaders stimulate creativity when they stay central in the external information network. In managerial terms, the analyses implicate that stimulating engineering design team creativity requires team leaders to smartly limit their involvement in communication and mainly act as gatekeepers to external sources of information.     

On rapid change points under long memory

Estimation of points of rapid change in the mean function m(t) is considered under long memory residuals, irregularily spaced time points and smoothly changing marginal distributions obtained by local Gaussian subordination. The approach is based on kernel estimation of derivatives of the trend function. An asymptotic expression for the mean squared error is obtained. Limit theorems are derived for derivatives of m and the time points where rapid change occurs. The results are illustrated by an application to measurements of oxygen isotopes trapped in the Greenland ice sheets during the last 20,000 years.     

Population aging and environmental quality in OECD countries: evidence from sulfur dioxide emissions data

Recent literature has suggested that population aging may shape energy demand and related emissions. Recent scholarship also suggests that emissions play a role in contemporary climate change and, as such, understanding the effect of population compositional change has considerable environmental policy importance. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the macro-level relationship between population aging and emissions of sulfur dioxide. We extend a standard macroeconomic estimation function by including the age composition of the population. In doing so, we separate, for the first time in the literature on aging and the environment, the life-cycle dimension of the age structure from its cohort dimension. We utilize data representing a balanced panel of 25 OECD countries during the period from 1970 to 2000. Consistent with our expectations, we find that societies with a low proportion of young and a high proportion of senior citizens emit more sulfur dioxide. At the same time, our results suggest that a high proportion of individuals born before 1960 is positively correlated to national sulfur dioxide emissions. Our study contributes to understanding of past emission patterns in OECD countries and the findings may allow for improvements in future emission projections.     

对公司影像的勾画

本文认为,经济学家有必要更加多层次和全方位地勾画企业的图景。为此,从三维角度观察企业管理而形成的影像,构成了本文“理想化的维度”。这些维度分别是公司的利润、社会需求以及社会责任。一家企业类似一幅画,是企业家个人创造力与管理艺术的体现。它拥有自身的形式与结构,而且旨在体现和满足社会需求。在以三维角度对企业前景分析中,利润、社会需求以及企业和企业家社会责任等维度,应是企业管理理念与实践的主要维度。由于管理不同,企业性质和体制的色彩极其丰富。随着企业社会责任的不断增加,企业活动图景的维度也在不断扩展。     

Reflections on knowledge-based approaches to the organization of production

Knowledge-based approaches to the firm offer valuable insights into some of the central issues of governance and organizational design—especially into long neglected problems of coordination. I start from the assumption that the fundamental problem of economic organization is reconciling efficiency in knowledge development with efficiency in knowledge application. The paper extends the knowledge-based view of the firm and knowledge integration approach to organizational capability that I outlined in earlier papers (Grant in Strategic Management Journal, 1996a; Grant in Journal of Management Studies 7(4)375–387, 1996b) and draws upon subsequent contributions to the literature. From this basis, I derive implications for the relative efficiencies of alternative institutions of economic organization and for the design of firm structures.     

What Does Really Drive Consumer Confidence?

We construct a novel index of households’ macroeconomic environment (HOME) based on the data from 22 high-income European countries between 2002 Q1 and 2018 Q4. The resulting index is in line with the broad features of the countries’ business and financial cycles and captures well households’ perception of their underlying economic situation. We discuss joint properties of the HOME index and the widely employed survey-based consumer confidence indicator. We show that households’ expectations are tightly linked to current macroeconomic conditions. This finding echoes the literature linking consumer attitudes and actual economic developments. The HOME index also reflects the importance of asset prices and lending conditions for households’ behavior. In a single-country case study, we provide empirical evidence that links the proposed index to new credit extended to households. The evidence suggests that households need a longer period of good macroeconomic conditions to decide to take on a mortgage than they do in the case of a consumer loan.