Ideal Values and Counter‐ideal Values as Two Distinct Forces: Exploring a Gap in Organizational Value Research

Motives and values at work have long been key topics of business and management studies. In a focused review of the literature on the nature of human values, this paper identifies a disconnect with the literature on human motivation, despite the otherwise inherent relatedness of the two fields. Specifically, extant theory and research have conceptualized values generally in terms of ideals, namely desired end‐states that individuals strive to approach. Although values, by this definition, express motivational concerns, theories of human motivation suggest that there are two forces to consider, i.e. approach and avoidance motivation. By applying this ‘two forces’ perspective to value research, this paper identifies a gap in the literature on values: namely, the idea that individuals are also influenced by counter‐ideal values, i.e. end‐states that they deliberately seek to avoid. The identification of this gap opens up new opportunities for value research in general and organizational value research in particular. To pave the way for future research, this paper critically discusses the few studies that have taken first steps in that direction and outlines research questions that may follow for issues such as employer branding and person–organization fit. This paper closes by providing suggestions on how to tackle the issue in organizational practice.     

Child mortality and fertility decline: Does the Barro-Becker model fit the facts?

I compare the predictions of three variants of the altruistic parent model of Barro and Becker for the relationship between child mortality and fertility. In the baseline model fertility choice is continuous, and there is no uncertainty over the number of surviving children. The baseline model is contrasted to an extension with discrete fertility choice and stochastic mortality and a setup with sequential fertility choice. The quantitative predictions of the models are remarkably similar. While in each model the total fertility rate falls as child mortality declines, the number of surviving children increases. The results suggest that factors other than declining infant and child mortality are responsible for the large decline in net reproduction rates observed in industrialized countries over the last century. Financial support by the National Science Foundation (grant SES-0217051) and the UCLA Academic Senate is gratefully acknowledged. I thank Sebnem Kalemli-Oczan, Rodrigo Soares, and two anonymous referees for comments that helped to substantially improve the paper. Olesya Baker and Ilya Berger provided excellent research assistance. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

The Institutional Challenge of the ACP/EU Economic Partnership Agreements

The Economic Partnership Agreements between the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the European Union should serve as an opportunity to accelerate ACP global and regional trade integration and as an important tool for development and the eradication of poverty. There are, however, a number of preconditions. This article argues that institutional quality plays a key role in successful trade liberalisation. In fact, only countries with high‐quality institutions, partly in the form of good government regulation, are likely to benefit from trade. Unfortunately, the vast majority of African countries have excessive regulation that hinders them from taking advantage of trade. The necessary reforms to resolve this problem pose significant challenges, implying major risks for these countries in the EPA process.     

Tukey-Type Distributions in the Context of Financial Data

Abstract

In one-parameter (θ) families, we were not aware of explicit hypothesis testing scenarios where maximal invariant statistics failed to distinguish the models. We start with a concrete example (Sec. 2.2) to highlight such a hypothesis testing problem involving markedly different models. In this problem, because of the absence of a nontrivial uniformly most powerful invariant (UMPI) test, we briefly suggest two approaches to test the hypothesis. The first resolution (Sec. 3.1) is frequentist in nature. It utilizes a weight function on the parameter space and compares “average” distributions obtained under the null and alternative models in the sense of Wald (1947 Wald , A. ( 1947 ). Sequential Analysis . New York : Wiley . [Google Scholar] 1950 Wald , A. ( 1950 ). Statistical Decision Functions . New York : Wiley . [Google Scholar]). In contrast, a fully Bayesian resolution (Sec. 3.2) is also included. The note ends with a series of other interesting examples involving one-parameter families where maximal invariant statistics fail to distinguish the hypothesized models. The examples include easy-to-construct families of probability models involving only a single location or scale parameter θ.     

Bounded influence estimation for regression and scale

Bednarski and Müller [Optimal bounded influence regression and scale M-estimators in the context of experimental design, Statistics 35 (2001), pp. 349–369] introduced a class of bounded influence M estimates for the simultaneous estimation of regression and scale in the linear model with normal errors by solving the corresponding normal location and scale problem at each design point. This limits the proposal to regressor distributions with finite support. Based on their approach, we propose a slightly extended class of M estimates that is not restricted to finite support and is numerically easier to handle. Moreover, we employ the even more general class of asymptotically linear (AL) estimators which, in addition, is not restricted to normal errors. The superiority of AL estimates is demonstrated by numerical comparisons of the maximum asymptotic mean-squared error over infinitesimal contamination neighbourhoods.     

Leaving Home for Marital and Non-marital Reasons in the Netherlands, 1850–1940: The Impact of Parental Death and Parental Remarriage

European Journal of Population - Previous research shows that parentally bereaved children in north-western Europe in the past left home earlier than children who lived together with both...     

On- and offline detection of structural breaks in thermal spraying processes

We investigate and develop methods for structural break detection, considering time series from thermal spraying process monitoring. Since engineers induce technical malfunctions during the processes, the time series exhibit structural breaks at known time points, giving us valuable information to conduct the investigations. First, we consider a recently developed robust online (also real-time) filtering (i.e. smoothing) procedure that comprises a test for local linearity. This test rejects when jumps and trend changes are present, so that it can also be useful to detect such structural breaks online. Second, based on the filtering procedure we develop a robust method for the online detection of ongoing trends. We investigate these two methods as to the online detection of structural breaks by simulations and applications to the time series from the manipulated spraying processes. Third, we consider a recently developed fluctuation test for constant variances that can be applied offline, i.e. after the whole time series has been observed, to control the spraying results. Since this test is not reliable when jumps are present in the time series, we suggest data transformation based on filtering and demonstrate that this transformation makes the test applicable.     

Column generation with free replicability in DEA

The evaluation of efficiency scores in data envelopment analysis is based on the construction of artificial decision making units subject to some assumptions, usually requiring convexity of the production possibility set. This demands divisibility in input and output, which is not always possible. The so-called free replicability model, proposed by Henry Tulkens, permits input and output to enter in only discrete amounts. The model is of a mixed integer programming type, for which the number of variables, here corresponding to the decision making units, may be critical in order to reach an optimal solution.     

Emotions and the optimality of uneven tournaments

Standard results from tournament theory show that an employer should avoid organizing uneven tournaments in which workers are characterized by different cost functions. In this paper, we introduce a concept of emotions that workers have when comparing their own performance with the performances of their co-workers. We can show that under emotional workers the employer may prefer uneven tournaments to even ones. In that case, the employer benefits from both positive and negative emotions. Moreover, the behavior of emotional workers fits well with experimental findings on uneven tournaments where players choose excessive effort levels.