Token Presence or Substantive Participation? A Study of Labor Trustees on Pension boards

In contrast to their absence from corporate boards in North America, labor representatives do have a seat on many pension boards. Given the lack of research on the role of labor participation in these fora, this study reports findings from a survey of labor trustees. We find that labor trustees make greater contributions to procedure-oriented processes such as information sharing, rule-making and rule interpretation; and, fewer contributions to investment-oriented processes such as investment decisions, fund performance and manager selection. Gender does not seem to matter in explaining participation in board activities. Accountability in terms of a requirement to report back to their union did increase labor trustee contribution but only to procedural issues, not investment issues. Short board tenure, lack of multiple labor seats and lack of training appear to limit labor trustees’ contribution to investment-based issues. Prior exposure to pension issues, and longer tenure appear to increase contributions to procedure-based issues. Exclusionary board dynamics hinder both types of contributions by labor trustees. These findings suggest that labor trustees do take advantage of their position to make procedural contributions but they find it hard to expand into newer, non-traditional roles such as investment-related activities of the Board.     

Implementation of evidence-based interventions: analyzing critical components for sustainability in community mental health services

This study analyses the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based community mental health services in the form of publicly financed Individual Placement and Support programs. Critical implementation components and program fidelity were assessed after one year. After two years, program fidelity was assessed once again. After three years, the programs’ sustainability was assessed and semi-structured interviews performed, in order to deepen the understanding of implementation. Interviews and documents provided the quantitative and qualitative data, which were analyzed by the use of the Supported Employment Fidelity Scale, the Sustainable Implementation Scale (which was developed in a connecting study), and qualitative content analysis. Despite promising fidelity results after one year, eight out of 14 programs were terminated within three years. Implementation of integrated evidence-based programs in community-based settings is a delicate undertaking. Implementing agencies can benefit from rigorous preparation before program start, especially concerning the circumstances at the organizational level, such as making plans for collaboration, financing and assessments of program fidelity.     

SurveyMotion: what can we learn from sensor data about respondents’ completion and response behavior in mobile web surveys?

Participation in web surveys via smartphones increased continuously in recent years. The reasons for this increase are a growing proportion of smartphone owners and an increase in mobile Internet access. However, research has shown that smartphone respondents are frequently distracted and/or multitasking, which might affect completion and response behavior in a negative way. We propose ‘SurveyMotion (SMotion)’, a JavaScript-based tool for mobile devices that can gather information about respondents’ motions during web survey completion by using sensor data. Specifically, we collect data about the total acceleration (TA) of smartphones. We conducted a lab experiment and varied the form of survey completion (e.g. standing or walking). Furthermore, we employed questions with different response formats (e.g. radio buttons and sliders) and measured response times. The results reveal that SMotion detects higher TAs of smartphones for respondents with comparatively higher motion levels. In addition, respondents’ motion level affects response times and the quality of responses given. The SMotion tool promotes the exploration of how respondents complete mobile web surveys and could be employed to understand how future mobile web surveys are completed.     

Children with disabilities in Swedish child welfare – a differentiating and disabling practice

ABSTRACT

Research shows that children with disabilities are victims of violence and abuse to a higher extent than other children and thus need support from social services. In Sweden, cooperation between two different social services units is required to support children with disabilities in socially vulnerable families. In this study, we have examined the intersection between children and disability in a Swedish social services context from the perspective of childhood studies and disability studies. The reasoning of the two units including the child perspective emerged during focus group interviews based on two vignettes. The results show two different rationalities, which has consequences for the disabled child. In spite of a social policy where the ‘best interests of the child’ are meant to prevail and disabilities are meant to be interpreted as barriers in society, children with disabilities seem to be reduced to individuals who are lacking in ability and competency and who are profoundly victimised by power structures that favour the adult perspective in social services.     

Thinking critically about cross-cultural implementation—Swedish social workers’ experiences of testing the Kids’ Club method for helping child and mother victims of intimate partner violence

There are calls for evidence-based methods for helping children to deal with experiences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in many countries. Therefore, it has been commonplace to implement such methods from outside of their home country. The aim of this study is to examine Swedish social workers’ experiences of testing the American Kids’ Club method for child and mother victims of IPV. After having tested leading Kids’ Club groups, seventeen social workers at four different locations were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The results indicate that the social workers generally accepted the method. This was related both to some general features of the method and to their perceiving it as somewhat flexible. According to the social workers, the method needs some cultural adaptation to better suit the Swedish social services setting, otherwise it cannot be fully accepted. Finally, they thought that successful implementation depended on an organizational structure that enabled enough children to be referred to the programme as well as either high personal commitment or an organization that prioritized the method. Based on these results, we conclude that importing an American evidence-based group method to help children exposed to IPV to Sweden demands attention to issues of cultural adaption.     

From zero-sum to win-win - Organisational conditions for successful shared value strategy implementation

The number of publications on shared value strategies (SVSs) is continuously increasing. Literature does not answer the question which organisational conditions are necessary and which conjunctions of conditions are sufficient for the successful implementation of SVSs. This research aims at filling the gap by condensing empirical evidence found in the literature on successful SVSs, stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility, and positive social change. The article synthesises the findings of these streams of research into a set-theoretical framework and proposes five complex conditions necessary for successful SVS implementation: shared value-oriented entrepreneurial vision, strategic alignment (STA), shared value-oriented innovation (SVI), networking capabilities (NCs), and impact monitoring. Additional empirical evidence from cases claiming successful implementation of SVS allows the suggestion of several simple conditions constituting the complex conditions. Qualitative comparative analysis can be used for empirically testing the necessity of the suggested conditions and the sufficiency of conjunctions of complex conditions for SVS implementation success. The proposed framework enhances theoretical knowledge concerning successful SVS implementation and is an important step to support management efforts in reorienting their companies from zero-sum strategies to win-win SVSs.     

A consistency result in general censoring models

In this paper we prove a consistency result for sieved maximum likelihood estimators of the density in general random censoring models with covariates. The proof is based on the method of functional estimation. The estimation error is decomposed in a deterministic approximation error and the stochastic estimation error. The main part of the proof is to establish a uniform law of large numbers for the conditional log-likelihood functional, by using results and techniques from empirical process theory.     

Unconditional Quantile Treatment Effects Under Endogeneity

This article develops estimators for unconditional quantile treatment effects when the treatment selection is endogenous. We use an instrumental variable (IV) to solve for the endogeneity of the binary treatment variable. Identification is based on a monotonicity assumption in the treatment choice equation and is achieved without any functional form restriction. We propose a weighting estimator that is extremely simple to implement. This estimator is root n consistent, asymptotically normally distributed, and its variance attains the semiparametric efficiency bound. We also show that including covariates in the estimation is not only necessary for consistency when the IV is itself confounded but also for efficiency when the instrument is valid unconditionally. An application of the suggested methods to the effects of fertility on the family income distribution illustrates their usefulness. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Multiple imputation in practice—a case study using a complex German establishment survey

Multiple imputation is widely accepted as the method of choice to address item nonresponse in surveys. Nowadays most statistical software packages include features to multiply impute missing values in a dataset. Nevertheless, the application to real data imposes many implementation problems. To define useful imputation models for a dataset that consists of categorical and possibly skewed continuous variables, contains skip patterns and all sorts of logical constraints is a challenging task. Besides, in most applications little attention is paid to the evaluation of the underlying assumptions behind the imputation models.