Relatives in Residence: Relatedness of Household Members Drives Schooling Differentials in Mozambique

Children typically receive investments from their fathers, but absent fathers often invest at low levels. In a father's absence, what types of nonfathers invest heavily in children? This article investigates educational participation as a reflection of childhood investments on Ibo Island, Mozambique, where only one third of school‐aged children live with their biological fathers. Father‐present children generally attended school at the highest rates. Stepchildren and father‐absent relatives (e.g., grandchildren, nieces) attended school at comparably high rates if any coresiding children were father‐present. This may signal high altruism among present fathers toward some nonoffspring. Consistent with this result, a fixed effects model indicates that, within the same household, adult males invested equally in their own children, relatives, and stepchildren. Prejudicially lower investments were made in children who were unrelated to the household's adult males, however; this result has strong negative implications for the well‐being of African children fostered by nonrelatives.     

“Fear Runs Deep:” The Anticipated Needs of LGBT Older Adults in Long-Term Care

Objectives: Older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults are a vulnerable yet resilient population who face unique stressors as they foresee health decline. This paper presents the results of a study about community-dwelling LGBT older adults’ anticipated needs and fears related to nursing homes and assisted living. Methods: This qualitative study collected data through seven focus groups. The sample (N = 50) consisted of LGBT-identified adults age 55 and over. We used an inductive, thematic analysis approach to data analysis. Results: Participants seek an inclusive environment where they will be safe and feel connected to a community. They fear dependence on healthcare providers, dementia, mistreatment, and isolation. Importantly, these fears can lead to identity concealment and psychological distress, including suicide ideation. Discussion: This study adds to the existing literature about the worries of older LGBT adults as they anticipate long-term care. The results suggest that older LGBT adults seek LGBT-inclusive residential care settings that encompass two distinct yet related aspects of LGBT-affirmative care: the procedural (e.g. culturally competent skills and knowledge of practitioners) and the implicit (e.g. the values and mission of the organization). This paper identifies implications for practice, policy, and training.     

Waste identification diagrams

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a very popular tool in lean environments to represent production flows, mapping value stream of a product or family of products, and helps to identify some types of waste. Although very popular, this tool has some limitations as already described in many publications, especially in terms of restrictions in showing most types of waste as well as in its inability to represent various production routes. The purpose of this study is to introduce the waste identification diagram (WID), a new tool to represent production units with its different forms of waste, which overcomes some VSM limitations. The originality of WID comes from the use of its symbols’ dimensions to convey, in a visual and immediate way, relevant information about a production unit. In this paper, WID is applied on a production unit of a lift manufacturer, for testing its performance and comparing it to VSM. The main findings are that WID is in general more effective than VSM in terms of representation of complex production units and in terms of identification of more forms of waste. WID must however overcome some of its limitations such as the lack of information-flow representation and the links to suppliers and clients.     

Managing Maturing Government‐Supported Networks: The Shift from Monitoring to Embeddedness Controls

In formal inter‐firm networks backed with significant financial support by policy‐makers, network boards are typically established to monitor network activities and to manage the tension between organizational and collective interests. This approach to network governance, however, builds mainly upon agency logic. We integrate agency with embeddedness theory to offer insights into the effectiveness of monitoring as a governance mechanism as networks mature and member firms become embedded. The analyses focus on two issues: (1) how network board characteristics typically associated with monitoring – board independence, board size and board compensation – influence network performance; and (2) how these effects are moderated by network age. The model is tested with longitudinal data on 53 government‐supported networks. In addition to the direct effects of board characteristics, network board size and board compensation have a stronger positive impact on network performance in younger networks than in more mature networks. This study provides insight into why the instituting of boards may prove successful for network‐level performance in newly formed government‐supported networks, but also explains why the positive effects from network board monitoring may diminish as networks grow older.     

Leadership,Passion and Performance: A Study of Job Creation Projects during the Recession

In the aftermath of the economic recession that began in 2008, governmental bodies have been assisting private sector companies to create jobs. To increase financial performance under greater economic uncertainty and liquidity constraints, this study proposes that a leader's type of passion could explain why some project leaders who receive government funding succeed in creating jobs whereas others do not. Harmonious passion, a voluntary but not overpowering urge to engage in an activity, leads to higher job creation, especially under greater environmental complexity. Obsessive passion, an uncontrollable urge to engage in an activity, also leads to higher job creation, particularly under increasing environmental dynamism. Using survey data from 105 European Union projects and archival data on job creation from the EU funding agency, we find support for the proposed framework. The findings provide a basis for acknowledging the relevance of a leader's passion for environmental adaptation.     

Managing Logistics in Regional Banknote Supply Chain Under Security Concerns

We study the logistics problem faced by Regional Branches (RBs) of a central bank in managing the currency supply under security concerns. While making banknote supply decisions to Sub‐Branches (SBs), the management of RB must achieve two goals simultaneously: (i) guarantee that each SB has sufficient inventories of all denominations of banknotes to satisfy the demands from all commercial banks within its service area, and (ii) control the annual spending on this banknote supply operation. Due to security concerns, the following methods are implemented in the process of transporting banknotes: (i) the capacity of a cash truck is limited by the total face value (instead of the physical space) of banknotes, and (ii) empty decoy trucks are deployed along with the trucks filled with banknotes. After deriving a polynomial‐time strategy to guarantee an optimal solution for the special Bin‐Packing Problem faced in this study, we provide an exact formulation for the RB's supply planning problem. We also propose several polynomial‐time algorithms for deriving either optimal or near‐optimal solutions for the problem under different settings. Using the weekly demand data obtained from the central bank, we verify the performance of our algorithms, and analyze the impacts of changes in these features and in the fleet capacity on the total cost incurred by an RB under various scenarios.     

Does Family Structure Matter in the Relationships Between Youth Assets and Youth Alcohol,Drug and Tobacco Use?

This study investigated significant relationships between youth assets and youth alcohol, tobacco, and drug use that differ according to family structure (one- or two-parent households). Data were collected from a randomly sampled inner-city population (n=1,256 teenagers and 1,256 parents of the teenagers) using in-home, in-person interviews. Logistic regression analyses, stratifying by one- and two-parent household status, were conducted with nine youth assets as the independent variables and youth alcohol, tobacco, and drug use as the dependent variables. Results indicated that the associations between assets and risk behaviors varied depending upon whether the youth lived in one- or two-parent households. Continued research is warranted to further investigate associations among family structure, youth assets, and youth risk behaviors.     

Bank Loan Officers' Perceptions of Business Owners: The Role of Gender

There is a widely held belief that banks may be discriminating against female business owners. This study was designed to explore the perceptions held by bank loan officers of male and female business owners, using Bourdieu's theory of practice and Kelly's personal construct methodology. The research literature might lead to an expectation that the characteristics of the business owners would be relatively homogenous but that men and women business owners would be construed differently (for example women might be seen to lack drive). However, the results demonstrate heterogeneity in the constructs held by bank loan officers, and a particular concern with the character of the business owner. Significant gender differences were observed in only 20 of the 325 constructs elicited from 35 bank loan officers. Female bank loan officers were as likely as male bank loan officers to draw gender distinctions between business owners. Detailed multivariate analyses confirmed no evidence of systematic gender differences in the constructs held by bank loan officers of business owners.     

Partnership Instability and Child Well‐Being

We use data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N= 2,111) to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers’ partnership changes between birth and age 3 on children’s behavior. We find that children born to unmarried and minority parents experience significantly more partnership changes than children born to parents who are married or White. Each transition is associated with a modest increase in behavioral problems, but a significant number of children experience 3 or more transitions. The association between instability and behavior is mediated by maternal stress and lower quality mothering. The findings imply that policies aimed at reducing maternal stress and partnership instability may improve child well‐being.