External knowledge search,absorptive capacity and radical innovation in high-technology firms

Open innovation and absorptive capacity are two concepts based on the idea that companies can leverage the knowledge generated externally to improve their innovation performance. The aim of this paper is to analyse the joint effect of open innovation and absorptive capacity on a firm's radical innovation. Open innovation is expressed in terms of external search breadth and depth strategies and absorptive capacity is described by distinguishing between potential and realized absorptive capacity. In order to test our hypotheses, we carried out empirical research in firms operating in high-technology industries. The results indicate that internal routines and processes for absorbing external knowledge help explain radical innovation as they show a significant effect of potential and realized absorptive capacity. Also, there is a moderating effect of absorptive capacity on open innovation. Specifically, potential absorptive capacity exerts a positive effect on the relationship between external search breadth and depth and radical innovation. Realized absorptive capacity moderates the influence of external search breadth. These findings confirm the complementary nature of absorptive capacity and open innovation search strategies on radical innovation.     

Using Malmquist Indexes to measure changes in the productivity and efficiency of US accounting firms before and after the Sarbanes–Oxley Act

There have been many criticisms of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act passed in July of 2002 to correct business accountability and performance practices. The act has a major emphasis on accounting and its practices. This paper attempts a response to these criticisms by investigating changes in productive efficiency for 62 of the largest US public accounting firms between the periods (2000–2001) and (2003–2004)—the periods before and after enactment of SOX in July of 2002. DEA is used to calculate Malmquist indexes of productivity and efficiency changes. This index is used because it can distinguish between changes in technical efficiency, which limit the possibilities, and changes in the performance efficiencies for each firm. Contrary to many of the criticisms, results indicate that accounting firms have exhibited significant post SOX growth in productive efficiency which is better than pre-SOX performances.     

Nurse safety: How is safety climate related to affect and attitude?

Occupational accidents and injuries continue to be a critical concern for nurses, given the hazardous healthcare environment. This study advances the research on workplace safety by studying the process variables (i.e. job-related negative affect (JRNA) and job satisfaction) in explaining the relationship between safety climate and various safety criteria in nurses. Based on survey data from 326 nurses, our findings suggest that psychological safety climate is negatively related to JRNA, turnover intentions, safety workarounds, and workplace hazards. In addition, structural equation modelling indicated general support for a model in which psychological safety climate influences employee strain through job attitudes, including JRNA and job satisfaction. More specifically, job attitudes were found to mediate the relationship between psychological safety climate and turnover intentions, experience of hazards, and injuries. Safety workarounds did not significantly relate to injuries. The present study contributes to the ongoing improvement of interventions aimed at mitigating nurses’ injuries by integrating job attitudes into the safety climate–safety outcome framework.     

A Note on Air‐Cargo Capacity Contracts

Carriers (airlines) use medium‐term contracts to allot bulk cargo capacity to forwarders who deliver consolidated loads for each flight in the contractual period (season). Carriers also sell capacity to direct‐ship customers on each flight. We study capacity contracts between a carrier and a forwarder when certain parameters such as the forwarder's demand, operating cost to the carrier, margin, and reservation profit are its private information. We propose contracts in which the forwarder pays a lump sum in exchange for a guaranteed capacity allotment and receives a refund for each unit of unused capacity according to a pre‐announced refund rate. We obtain an upper bound on the informational rent paid by the carrier for a menu of arbitrary allotments and identify conditions under which it can eliminate the informational rent and induce the forwarder to choose the overall optimal capacity allotment (i.e., one that maximizes the combined profits of the carrier and the forwarder).     

A two-study investigation of item wording effects on leader–follower convergence in descriptions of the leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship

The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership focuses on the quality of relationships built between leaders and subordinates; LMX measures are designed to assess the quality of these relationships. Since the leader and subordinate are jointly embedded in the relationship, it is reasonable to assume that their ratings of their relationship will converge to some reasonable extent. However, leader–member convergence on the most widely used measures, the LMX-7 and SLMX-7 scales, has historically been low. To address this, we conduct two studies to investigate whether item wording and content might be a cause of poor LMX convergence. The obtained results support the conclusion that the wording and content of these measures are, in fact, introducing attributional and social desirability biases into the rating process and causing some of the poor LMX convergence that is commonly seen. Implications for extant and future LMX research are discussed.     

Childhood innocence and experience: Memory,discourse and practice

This article examines how childhood innocence is taken up in (92) memories of undergraduate students across four sites in the US and Canada. Drawing from Foucault's theory of discourse, we examine how three themes—innocence as not knowing, innocence as being provided for, and loss of innocence as exposure to adversity—construct childhood as the absence of conflict, which perpetuates the myth of an innocence/experience binary and encourages a deficit perspective of childhood. These findings contribute to teacher education and childhood studies by highlighting the importance of interrogating adult memories in order to disrupt normative assumptions about children.     

Refugee life,refugee space: Ankara as a bottom-up alternative

During research conducted in the summer of 2020, I observed the advanced marginality of the refugees in Ankara, Turkey. While some authors have examined this precarity, and some others have examined how refugees have begun to live in a spatially distinct section of certain cities, the combination of these two phenomena demands further investigation. If the underpinning truly is spatial as claimed by Lefebvre (The production of space. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991), then the precarious subject and the precarious space co-produce each other. What this paper intends to do is to combine space and precarity using the observations of Wacquant (Urban poverty and the underclass: a reader. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996, Urban Studies, 2016, 53, 1077) in his various analyses on the ghetto in France and the United States. In Wacquant's work, we can begin to see a spatial conception of precarity, and we can further extend this to the point that as space is a production and its subjects are also a co-constitution of that space. Nevertheless, Sampson (Ethnic & Racial Studies, 2014, 37, 1732) points out a certain state centrism in Wacquant's analysis. Building upon this, as well as the work of Roy (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2011, 35, 223 and Territories of poverty: rethinking north and south. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015), we can offer the refugee neighbourhood in Ankara as an example of “bottom-up” agency, alternative to Wacquant's original state-centric analysis. In the course of this paper, this possibility of a “bottom-up” refugee solidarity and related refugee space will be analysed.     

Living arrangements of older malaysians: Who coresides with their adult children?

More than two-thirds of Malaysians age 60 or older coreside with an adult child. Data from the Senior sample of the Second Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS-2) are used to investigate which “seniors” (persons age 60 or older) live in this way. The analysis generally supports the notion that coresidence is influenced by the benefits, costs, opportunities, and preferences for coresidence versus separate living arrangements. For example, married seniors are more likely to coreside with adult children when housing costs are greater in their area or when the husband or wife is in poor health. This finding suggests that married parents and children live together to economize on living costs or to receive help with household services. Unmarried seniors who are better off economically are less likely to live with adult children, presumably because they use their higher incomes to “purchase privacy.”     

Sexual Victimization and Sex-Related Drinking Motives: How Protective is Emotion Regulation?

One in five college women experience sexual victimization (SV), and SV severity is associated with subsequent psychological distress, including sex-related distress. SV severity may also be associated with drinking motives to cope with sex-related distress and to enhance sex (sex-related drinking motives [SRDMs]), particularly if individuals suffer from emotion regulation (ER) difficulties. College women (N = 151) completed a survey assessment of ER, SV history, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), and SRDMs. Twelve regression models assessed six facets of ER as moderators between SV severity and SRDMs. Among women with no or low levels of prior SV severity, women with greater access to ER strategies were less likely to endorse drinking to cope SRDMs. At higher levels of SV severity, women at all levels of access to ER strategies were equally likely to endorse drinking to cope SRDMs, suggesting that access to ER strategies did not mitigate motivations to drink to cope with sex-related distress for these women. Women with severe SV histories may benefit from interventions that build on existing ER strengths or address other factors. However, greater access to ER strategies may serve as a protective factor against SRDMs when SV severity is low.