Followers' Personality and the Perception of Transformational Leadership: Further Evidence for the Similarity Hypothesis

Managers and supervisors are thought to affect their followers' attitudes and behaviour. Within leadership research, behaviour of leaders and managers is usually considered as the independent variable whilst followers' reactions are considered the dependent variable. In this study, we reverse this order and investigate the degree to which the evaluation of leadership is a result of followers' perceptions and attributions. In order to corroborate and extend previous experimental research, a field study was conducted to analyse the influence of followers' personality and perceived leader personality on followers' perception of leadership within an organizational setting. The results provide further evidence that followers' personality influences the perception of transformational leadership and commitment to the supervisor. Moreover, the perception of leaders' personality was related to the perception of leadership and commitment to the supervisor. The finding that the perception of supervisors' personality mediates both the relationship between followers' personality and the perception of leadership and commitment provides support for the similarity hypothesis. Results are discussed in the light of feedback and leader development.     

Dynamic reasoning and time pressure: Transition from analytical operations to experiential responses

Based upon the Decision Field Theory (Busemeyer and Townsend 1993), we tested a model of dynamic reasoning to predict the effect of time pressure on analytical and experiential processing during decision-making. Forty-six participants were required to make investment decisions under four levels of time pressure. In each decision, participants were presented with experiential cues which were either congruent or incongruent with the analytical information. The congruent/incongruent conditions allowed us to examine how many decisions were based upon the experiential versus the analytical information, and to see if this was affected by the varying degrees of time pressure. As expected, the overall accuracy was reduced with greater time pressure and accuracy was higher when the experiential and analytical cues were congruent than when they were incongruent. Of great interest was the data showing that under high time pressure participants used more experiential cues than at other time pressures. We suggest that the dynamic reasoning paradigm has some future potential for predicting the effects of experiential biases in general, and specifically under time pressure.     

Feeding Patterns and Emotional Care in Breastfed Infants

A number of studies have suggested breastfed infants have improved bonding and attachment or cognitive development outcomes. However, mechanisms by which these differences might develop are poorly understood. We used maternal time use data to examine whether exclusively breastfeeding mothers spend more time in close interactive behaviors with their infants than mothers who have commenced or completed weaning. Mothers (188) participating in a time use survey recorded infant feeding activities for 24 h over a 7 day period using an electronic device. Tracking was conducted at 3, 6, and 9 months postpartum. Data was collected for maternal activities including infant feeding and time spent in emotional care. The mothers of exclusively breastfed infants aged 3–6 months fed them frequently and total time spent in breastfeeding averaged around 17 h a week. Maternal time spent in emotional care was also substantial, and found to correlate positively with time spent breastfeeding. Exclusively breastfed infants received greatest amounts of emotional care from their mother, and exclusively formula fed infants the least. Mixed fed infants received more emotional care time than formula fed infants, but less than fully breastfed infants. These findings may help explain the differential cognitive developmental outcomes reported in the medical literature for breastfed and non breastfed infants.     

Der Wandel der Konsumstruktur in Deutschland – ein Indiz für die Individualisierung von Lebensstilen oder doch die Folge soziodemografischer Entwicklungen?The change of consumption patterns in Germany – an evidence of the individualization of lifestyles or the effect of socio-demographic changes?

Following the results of different empirical studies the consumption patterns of German households changed significantly during the last decades. While this change was attributed to a dissolving correlation between lifestyle and social status for a long time, more and more studies focus on the relationship of lifestyle and socio-demographic criteria again. This report analyses the effects of social composition regarding age, income and households types on the use of income between 1978 and 2008. The results of the decomposition analysis reveal that the socio-demographic components cannot explain the change of consumption patterns in Germany. Rather it seems that different social conditions during socialisation affect lifestyles and should be considered when analysing consumption patterns.     

Using Work Values to Predict Post‐Retirement Work Intentions

Work values might be proximal predictors of individuals' late‐career intentions because they serve as guiding principles for the selection, evaluation, and justification of vocational behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between work values and post‐retirement work intentions. The authors investigated individual work values within the structure of 4 higher order values elaborated on by Schwartz et al. ( 2012 ). Relationships between work values and 4 types of post‐retirement work intentions were examined. Data from 1,071 employees of a German logistics company were used to test the hypotheses. The results of a structural equation model indicated that work values were differentially related to the 4 types of post‐retirement work intentions. The identified work value–work type combinations add to the literature on post‐retirement work. Practice implications for promoting positive individual and organizational outcomes are drawn from the results.     

MEASURING THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MULTINATIONAL FIRMS' FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

Earlier work found evidence for geographic linkages of aggregate foreign direct investment across countries and country‐pairs. From a theoretical point of view, such linkages at the macroeconomic level may root in between‐firm as well as within‐firm linkages and originate from information spillovers across or within firms in exploring unknown markets, and vertical linkages between production plants across different locations within the firm. We use data on the universe of German multinational enterprises (MNEs) to empirically explore how marginal investments at one foreign affiliate depend on investments at other affiliates within the same MNE. The empirical approach employs two channels or modes of cross‐affiliate interdependence: mere geography (capturing horizontal linkages through correlated learning and horizontal competition within the firm) and input–output relationships within or across industries (which capture vertical linkages). Adding to earlier findings at the aggregate level, we find evidence of a significant interdependence of investments within the firm. In the firm‐level data at hand, vertical linkages appear to be more important than horizontal ones. Investments at one location tend to stimulate investments at other locations of the same MNE, particularly if input linkages are strong. The opposite seems to be true for output linkages. Beyond vertical linkages, mere geographic proximity matters only to a minor extent. This suggests that evidence of linkages through geographic closeness at aggregate data levels accrue mainly to reasons of vertical linkages within networks of affiliates. (JEL C31, D22, F21, F23, F68, G31, H32)     

A Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of Postsecondary Institution Conversions from Not-For-Profit to For-Profit

This study highlights the changes that have occurred at postsecondary institutions after conversion from not-for-profit to for-profit control. Using Delta Cost Project Data and a pre-post study design with a control group of not-for-profit institutions that did not convert, comparisons are drawn. The findings suggest that institutions that convert experience greater enrollment growth, a decline in fulltime employment levels per full time equivalent (FTE) student, no change in average expenses per FTE student, a decrease in total revenue, a decrease in Pell Grants received, a decrease in tuition and fees revenue, and a decline in average subsidy per student post conversion. These findings are critical to the creation of informed policy decisions regarding institutional conversions.     

Sampling schemes for price index construction: a performance comparison across the classification of individual consumption by purpose food groups

Five sampling schemes (SS) for price index construction – one cut-off sampling technique and four probability-proportional-to-size (pps) methods – are evaluated by comparing their performance on a homescan market research data set across 21 months for each of the 13 classification of individual consumption by purpose (COICOP) food groups. Classifications are derived for each of the food groups and the population index value is used as a reference to derive performance error measures, such as root mean squared error, bias and standard deviation for each food type. Repeated samples are taken for each of the pps schemes and the resulting performance error measures analysed using regression of three of the pps schemes to assess the overall effect of SS and COICOP group whilst controlling for sample size, month and population index value. Cut-off sampling appears to perform less well than pps methods and multistage pps seems to have no advantage over its single-stage counterpart. The jackknife resampling technique is also explored as a means of estimating the standard error of the index and compared with the actual results from repeated sampling.     

A tighter formulation of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-median problem

Given a set of clients and a set of potential sites for facilities, the p-median problem consists of opening a set of p sites and assigning each client to the closest open facility to it. It can be viewed as a variation of the uncapacitated facility location problem. We propose a new formulation of this problem by a mixed integer linear problem. We show that this formulation, while it has the same value by LP-relaxation, can be much more efficient than two previous formulations. The computational experiment performed on two sets of benchmark instances has showed that the efficiency of the standard branch-and-cut algorithm has been significantly improved. Finally, we explore the structure of the new formulation in order to derive reduction rules and to accelerate the LP-relaxation resolution.