Sources,Characteristics and Effects of Mass Media Communication on Science: A Review of the Literature,Current Trends and Areas for Future Research

A significant amount of science coverage can be found nowadays in the mass media and is the main source of information about science for many. Accordingly, the relation between science and the media has been intensively analyzed within the social scientific community. It is difficult to keep track of this research, however, as a flurry of studies has been published on the issue. This article provides such an overview. First, it lays out the main theoretical models of science communication, that is, the ‘public understanding of science’ and the ‘mediatization’ model. Second, it describes existing empirical research. In this section, it demonstrates how science’s agenda‐building has improved, how science journalists working routines are described, how different scientific disciplines are presented in the mass media and what effects these media representations (might) have on the audience. Third, the article points out future fields of research.     

Writing from practice

This study investigates the effects of integration change on the integration success of German acquisitions in Poland. It is argued that the degree of integration change has a positive impact on two success measures, namely, economic growth and efficient co-operation, in the acquisition target. It is further argued that process transparency, participation and positive reinforcement are moderators in this relationship between degree of integration change and integration success. Hypotheses are tested on 521 Polish employees from twenty-nine German acquisitions made in Poland between 1991 and 1999. The results show that there was a positive relationship between degree of integration change and integration success as expected and that only process transparency emerged as a significant moderator of this relationship. Consequences for post-acquisition management after German acquisitions in Poland and limitations of the study are discussed.     

竞争力、竞争与国际化

本文就基于能力与资源的思想演化进行了论述,并提出了相应的框架.     

Health informatics for older people: a review of ICT facilitated integrated care for older people

Growing demands on welfare services, arising from expanding populations of older people in many countries, has led policy makers to consider the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a means to transform the cost-effective delivery of health and social care. The evidence for these claims is examined by reporting the main findings of a review of worldwide published literature documenting the adoption of health informatics applications to improve health and social care for older people. It focuses around two dimensions of the UK government's programme for 'modernising' public services, which emphasise the use of ICTs to facilitate the sharing of health and social services information and its potential to foster person-centred approaches to independent living. Findings suggest that there is little evidence that these dimensions have been realised in practice and the perceived incompatibility between them is more likely to produce expensive and ineffective health informatics outcomes.     

Power imbalance and value creation in joint ventures

Joint ventures (JVs) often do not create expected value due to power imbalance between partners. Despite the fact that JV partners are embedded in relational constraints, prior research has largely relied on economic reasoning by focusing on equity ownership difference between JV partners as the main source of power imbalance. We extend prior research to also consider important relational factors represented by repeated ties between partners and network openness, as well as institutional status difference and network status difference as two additional dimensions of power imbalance. Our findings indicate that ownership power imbalance by itself does not have a significant effect on value creation. However, value creation is facilitated when there is ownership power imbalance between partners with more repeated ties. In contrast, value creation may be hindered when JV partners with unequal ownership are embedded in more open interfirm alliance networks. Furthermore, value creation is facilitated if JV partners that have unequal ownership also have network status power imbalance in the same direction.     

Some sufficient conditions for the type 1 optimality of block designs

In this paper, we investigate the problem of determining block designs which are optimal under type 1 optimality criteria within various classes of designs having υ treatments arranged in b blocks of size k. The solutions to two optimization problems are given which are related to a general result obtained by Cheng (1978) and which are useful in this investigation. As one application of the solutions obtained, the definition of a regular graph design given in Mitchell and John (1977) is extended to that of a semi-regular graph design and some sufficient conditions are derived for the existence of a semi-regular graph design which is optimal under a given type 1 criterion. A result is also given which shows how the sufficient conditions derived can be used to establish the optimality under a specific type 1 criterion of some particular types of semi- regular graph designs having both equal and unequal numbers of replicates. Finally,some sufficient conditions are obtained for the dual of an A- or D-optimal design to be A- or D-optimal within an appropriate class of dual designs.     

Discriminating between the Poisson and negative binomial distributions:an application to goal scoring in association football

Negative binomial and Poisson distributions are fitted to data on scores in Association Football for the seasons 1946–47 to 1983–84. There are strong grounds for preferring the negative binomial up to 1970; thereafter the Poisson seems adequate. Simplification is achieved by fitting the negative binomial with a common parameter. The analyses are set in the context of previous applications and interpretations in the area. Different models giving rise to the negative binomial or Poisson are investigated and some support found for models not previously advanced in this context. Notwith-standing the success of such exercises some scepticism is expressed about the interpretations placed on previous analyses.