Strategic implications of the information age

conclusion The continued enhancements of information technologies facilitate and increase knowl-edge intensity in organizations. As such, knowledge and information technologies play critical roles in the development of competitive advantage by firms. For example, IT facilitates organizational learning and helps firms move into international markets by making it easier to coordinate geographically dispersed units and operations. Even entrepreneurial new venture firms are moving into international markets earlier in their life cycle (Oviatt and MacDougall, 1977; Zahra et al., 2000). IT has become especially important to smaller, entrepreneurial firms to facilitate their networking and coopera-tive ventures with other firms in order to compete more effectively with much larger firms for major projects. Furthermore, information technologies facilitate these firms’ technological learning, a critical element to their survival and long-term success (Zahra et al., 2000). IT has also helped firms from emerging markets (e.g., Korea, Mexico) compete more effectively against firms from developed markets that have more resources. Thus, IT has helped facilitate the increasing globalization of businesses.     

Getting Paid in Smiles: The Gendering of Child Care Work

Based on four and a half years of participant‐observation field research and focused interviews with men and women child care workers, the author examines the occupational processes of the entry and tenure of workers, paying particular attention to gender as it manifests in the meanings and actions involved in becoming and continuing as a child care worker. As men and women workers go about the business of becoming and being child care workers, they become active agents in the reproduction of child care as low‐wage, low‐status, women's work. Through the construction of particular gendered “accounts” and “vocabularies of motive,” workers play a key role in sustaining the status of child care as a gendered occupation.     

The Courtship Dance: Patterns of Nonverbal Synchronization in Opposite-Sex Encounters

This study examines the existence of behavioral correlates of synchronization on different levels of analysis and methods. We were unable to demonstrate a relation between synchronization defined in terms of movement echo or position mirroring and subjective experience of pleasure and interest in opposite-sex encounters. Significant results were found for a phenomenon we describe as hierarchically patterned synchronization. These patterns were identified with the help of a newly developed search algorithm. If a female is interested in a male, highly complex patterns of behavior with a constant time structure emerge. The patterns are pair-specific and independent from behavioral content. This rhythmic structure of interactions is discussed in functional terms of human courtship.     

Elitenselektion durch Bildung oder durch Herkunft?

Does the social origin have a direct effect on the unequal recruitment of the German business elites? Or, does the social origin have an indirect effect on the unequal recruitment only, by means of the unequal participation in the educational system as suggested by the functionalist elite theory? This question is examined with special reference to the business elite. For the 6.500 engineers, jurists, and economists, who received a doctor’s degree in the years of 1955, 1965, 1975, and 1985, the correlation between social origin, educational career, and professional career is analyzed by multivariate methods. The chances of achieving an executive position are 50% higher for individuals with a service class I background and 100% higher for those individuals with an upper class background in contrast to individuals with working class and middle class background. Therefore, the functionalist view can be regarded as incorrect. On the contrary, it holds that social origin has a strong direct effect on the social selection of the elites. Consequently, the social opening of the German educational system did not result into a social opening of the recruitment practices of the business elite. Rather, the opposite is the case: Social selection increased for the 1975 and 1985 cohorts.     

PROBLEMS OF THE POST-WAR PUBLIC: SOLDIERS AND CITIZENS

THE recent British White Paper on post-war education in Englandleaves little doubt that Britain looks to a new era of education.The work has already begun. The British soldier of today willbe the key citizen of tomorrow. Cognizant of this fact, theBritish War Office has established a far-reaching program ofeducation for citizenship among England's troops. It is being carried out by the Army Educational Corps. Thisarticle is the story of their work. Mr. Bickersteth, educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and theUniversity of Paris, is Director of Army Education in the BritishWar Office. He is on leave as Warden of Hart House, Universityof Toronto.     

Division of Responsibility in Care of the Aged

Not all elderly people need special care. This review refers to the dependent minority and to the services they need. Brief mention is made of the history of services which began with charitable relief by voluntary action, and the current relationship between government bodies and voluntary agencies is outlined. It is maintained that division of responsibility for the various types of care should be based on assessment of individual needs, decentralization of control, together with evaluation of the resources of the agencies concerned.     

Extreme Copulas and the Comparison of Ordered Lists

We introduce two extreme methods to pairwisely compare ordered lists of the same length, viz. the comonotonic and the countermonotonic comparison method, and show that these methods are, respectively, related to the copula T _M (the minimum operator) and the Ł ukasiewicz copula T _L used to join marginal cumulative distribution functions into bivariate cumulative distribution functions. Given a collection of ordered lists of the same length, we generate by means of T _M and T _L two probabilistic relations Q ^M and Q ^L and identify their type of transitivity. Finally, it is shown that any probabilistic relation with rational elements on a 3-dimensional space of alternatives which possesses one of these types of transitivity, can be generated by three ordered lists and at least one of the two extreme comparison methods.