Assessing job self-efficacy and organizational commitment considering a mediating role of information asymmetry

This study establishes a model by drawing from key postulates and findings under information asymmetry to explain the formation of organization commitment and job self-efficacy. In the proposed model, organizational commitment and job self-efficacy are influenced indirectly by social support, knowledge creation, and information intensity via the mediation of decision-making quality and perceived opportunism. Knowledge creation is influenced directly by both social support and information intensity. Empirical testing of this model, by investigating personnel from firms in one of Taiwan's well-known industrial zones, confirms the applicability of information asymmetry in understanding employees’ organizational commitment and job self-efficacy. The test results indicate that all the model paths except one (linking perceived opportunism and job self-efficacy) are significant. Finally, the research provides managerial implications and limitations.     

Extreme probabilities for contingency tables under row and column independence with application to fisher's exact test

Theorerms are proved for the maxima and minima of IIR_i!/IIC_j!/T!II_yij ! over r× c contingcncy tables Y=(y_ij) with row sums R₁,…,R_r, column sums C₁,…,C_c, and grand total T. These results are imlplemented into the network algorithm of Mehta and Patel (1983) for computing the P-value of Fisher's exact test for unordered r×c contingency tables. The decrease in the amount of computing time can be substantial when the column sums are very different.     

Perceptions of work stress in Australian firefighters

This study surveyed 747 firefighters on their perceptions of work stress. The current emphasis in the fire brigades is on the management of traumatic or critical incident stress, but other work stressors may also be important. The firefighters rated their jobs as more stressful than other occupations, and psychological work stress as highest among a set of potential sources and types of stress. Although many factors were mentioned, the most frequently indicated stressors were associated with exposure to traumatic incidents such as major accidents or the suffering of others. Those who had previous experience with stress were more likely to rate current and future risk of stress as higher. Knowledge of existing organizational approaches to stress management was limited. The firefighters rated individual and informal sessions for dealing with stress as potentially more useful than the formal debriefing sessions now common in many emergency organizatins. Those who had previous experience with stress, however, were more likely to favour a formal organizational approach.     

Protecting children in Scotland: examining the impact of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995

This paper discusses findings from a small‐scale study of the impact on child protection practice following implementation of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. The Act introduced three new measures to allow the state to intervene in families to protect a child where there is a risk of significant harm. These include the child protection order, the child assessment order and the exclusion order. The child protection order provides for the removal of a child to (or his or her retention in) a place of safety. In the first two years of the operation of the 1995 Act fewer applications were made for this order compared with similar provisions under the previous legislation. This reduction in applications appears to be related to unfamiliarity with new legislation; greater scrutiny resulting from the more formal application to the sheriff court; and the introduction of a new legal criterion for intervention, the presence or likelihood of ‘significant harm’. The introduction of the ‘no order’ principle into Scottish child care law is also likely to be a factor.     

THE USE OF CORRELATION IN LARGE SAMPLES

The asymptotic relative efficiency of Kendall's and Spearman's coefficients of rank correlation are considered for samples from a bivariate normal distribution and comments are made on the calculation of their variances. For large samples it is suggested that one should use mean values of the coefficients calculated by splitting the sample into a fairly large number of smaller samples. This reduces the amount of calculation required and the asymptotic relative efficiency of this procedure is found both for ρ= 0 and ρ≠ 0.