Strategic planning in smaller rapid growth companies

The research reported in this article is based on a study of the strategic planning practices of the 500 fastest growing privately held smaller companies in the United States ranked according to percentage of sales increases from 1978 to 1982.^p1 Based on the information provided, a clear picture emerges regarding the actual role of strategic planning in rapid growth companies.     

The Gendered Face of Terrorism

What does sociology have to contribute to our understanding of terrorism? As scholars of gender and the Far Right, we believe that we have much to offer the current debates. In this article, we focus both on contemporary cases of terrorism, the attacks of September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, and terrorist movements as gendered: as enactments of masculinity. In particular, we focus on the contemporary white supremacist movement, the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat faced by the USA. We suggest that the ideology and organization of many terrorist groups are saturated with gendered meanings, both as the analytic prism through which they view their situation, and also as a means of political mobilization.     

Quasi-maximum likelihood estimation and inference in dynamic models with time-varying covariances

We study the properties of the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) and related test statistics in dynamic models that jointly parameterize conditional means and conditional covariances, when a normal log-likelihood os maximized but the assumption of normality is violated. Because the score of the normal log-likelihood has the martingale difference property when the forst two conditional moments are correctly specified, the QMLE is generally Consistent and has a limiting normal destribution. We provide easily computable formulas for asymptotic standard errors that are valid under nonnormality. Further, we show how robust LM tests for the adequacy of the jointly parameterized mean and variance can be computed from simple auxiliary regressions. An appealing feature of these robyst inference procedures is that only first derivatives of the conditional mean and variance functions are needed. A monte Carlo study indicates that the asymptotic results carry over to finite samples. Estimation of several AR and AR-GARCH time series models reveals that in most sotuations the robust test statistics compare favorably to the two standard (nonrobust) formulations of the Wald and IM tests. Also, for the GARCH models and the sample sizes analyzed here, the bias in the QMLE appears to be relatively small. An empirical application to stock return volatility illustrates the potential imprtance of computing robust statistics in practice.     

Goodness of fit for the inverse Gaussian distribution

For testing the fit of the inverse Gaussian distribution with unknown parameters, the empirical distribution-function statistic A² is studied. Two procedures are followed in constructing the test statistic; they yield the same asymptotic distribution. In the first procedure the parameters in the distribution function are directly estimated, and in the second the distribution function is estimated by its Rao-Blackwell distribution estimator. A table is given for the asymptotic critical points of A². These are shown to depend only on the ratio of the unknown parameters. An analysis is provided of the effect of estimating the ratio to enter the table for A². This analysis enables the proposal of the complete operating procedure, which is sustained by a Monte Carlo study.     

Immigrants and alien workers

VII. Conclusion The number of immigrants now coming to the United States is proportionally only a fraction of the number that came in earlier years, and there is nothing in those numbers to suggest a difficult absorption burden. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, more than pay for the services they use with the taxes they pay, leaving a considerable net surplus that benefits American citizens. Immigrants raise productivity and do not cause an observable amount of unemployment of citizens. Admitting far more immigrants into the country than the law now allows would have positive effects on the incomes of citizens, and would enhance the continuing vitality of the United States.     

Campus attitudes toward alcohol and drugs in a deep southern university.

In our zeal to deal with alcohol and drug abuse, we may have a distorted picture of what the majority of college students actually think about alcohol and drug use. Students in this study done at a public university located in the Deep South report being generally intolerant of substance abuse.     

THE STRUCTURE OF FAMILY PARADIGMS: AN ANALYTICAL MODEL OF FAMILY VARIATION

The theory of family paradigms provides an integrative framework for under-standing and systematizing the diverse ways that families organize and make sense of family life. Using formal methods of analysis based on logical and geometrical arguments, the priecise implications of models of family types can be investigated and compared. The paradigmatic framework can thus be refined and extended to form a more rigorous theoretical grounding for family typologies is explored and a miltidimensional model is derived the geometry of which is equivalent to, but more succinctly captures, the underlying structure of uariation in family para-digms. In Part II, the resulting model is interpredtd and explored in terms of implications for family theory, theory construction, and family therapy. Clarifying the basic dimensions of the paradigmatic framework also permits more precise exploration of interrelationships among related models of family types, which can be understood as reduced models derivable from the complete geometry of the paradigmatic framework.     

Cognitive-behavioral-expressive interventions with aggressive and resistant youths.

Research into the nature of aggressive behavior in youths has demonstrated that these youths are often the victims of abuse, exhibit aggressive behavior in early childhood, and remain aggressive into young adulthood. The treatment approach described in this article is a modification of Monahan's [1981] model of the prediction of violent behavior and the anger-management approach of Novaco [1985], and integrates the developmental models of Piaget [1963] and Erikson [1959]. The program is a combination of cognitive, behavioral, and expressive therapies and is targeted to the reduction of dysfunctional cognitive, affective, behavioral, and problem-solving patterns of aggressive youths. As referrals of such aggressive clients are often involuntary, interventions with unwilling and resistant clients are also presented.     

THE ARTICULATION OF WORK THROUGH INTERACTION

This paper offers a set of related concepts for analyzing the interactional mechanics of how work is carried out in organizations, and for analyzing the structural/organizational conditions that bear upon work performance. Our analytic discussion centers around four main concepts: (a) articulation, (b) arrangements, (c) the process of working things out, and (d) stance. These concepts directly connect interaction to work and explain why work performance often bogs down and breaks down.