Corporate Political Activity: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

This paper reviews the diverse literature on corporate political activity (CPA) and develops a framework that details and integrates existing research in this field. A systematic analysis of extant CPA literatures is conducted to order them into domains that have implications for organizational performance. The paper is structured into three such domain emphases, which require further research investigation: resources and capabilities focus; institutional focus; and political environment focus. The contribution of each to an understanding of CPA in pursuit or defence of corporate competitive advantage is discussed. The authors also suggest that the internationalization of business, including the more recent emergence of developing country economies and companies, presents scholars with the challenge of understanding CPA in more varied institutional settings. CPA practices continue to expand as commerce goes increasingly global and, consequently, involves a wider array of political actors and institutions. The paper contributes by increasing the clarity of CPA classification, reflecting on the implications of a multi‐polar world for CPA research and advancing future agendas for scholars in this research community.     

Disability Identity Formation and Affirmation: The Experiences of Persons with Severe Mental Illness

This article examines the pervasive nature and extent of the debilitating sense of shame associated with disability. It then explores the emergence of disability identity, pride, and culture to challenge such shame—illustrated in personal narrative accounts of the individual and collective journeys of people coping with severe mental illness.     

Teachers,Schools, and Academic Achievement

This paper disentangles the impact of schools and teachers in influencing achievement with special attention given to the potential problems of omitted or mismeasured variables and of student and school selection. Unique matched panel data from the UTD Texas Schools Project permit the identification of teacher quality based on student performance along with the impact of specific, measured components of teachers and schools. Semiparametric lower bound estimates of the variance in teacher quality based entirely on within‐school heterogeneity indicate that teachers have powerful effects on reading and mathematics achievement, though little of the variation in teacher quality is explained by observable characteristics such as education or experience. The results suggest that the effects of a costly ten student reduction in class size are smaller than the benefit of moving one standard deviation up the teacher quality distribution, highlighting the importance of teacher effectiveness in the determination of school quality.     

Gemeinschaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community Concept

Community remains a potent symbol and aspiration in political and intellectual life. However, it has largely passed out of sociological analysis. The paper shows why this has occurred, and it develops a new typology that can make the concept useful again in sociology. The new typology is based on identifying structurally distinct subtypes of community using a small number of partitioning variables. The first partition is defined by the ultimate context of interaction; the second by the primary motivation for interaction; the third by rates of interaction and location of members; and the fourth by the amount of face-to-face as opposed to computer-mediated interaction. This small number of partitioning variables yields eight major subtypes of community. The paper shows how and why these major subtypes are related to important variations in the behavioral and organizational outcomes of community. The paper also seeks to resolve some disagreements between classical liberalism and communitarians. It shows that only a few of the major subtypes of community are likely to be as illiberal and intolerant as the selective imagery of classical liberals asserts, while at the same time only a few are prone to generate as much fraternalism and equity as the selective imagery of communitarians suggests. The paper concludes by discussing the forms of community that are best suited to the modern world.     

Arriving at a strategic theory of the firm

The theory of the firm seeks to explain the existence and boundaries of the firm in relation to the market. Since the pioneering work of Coase (The nature of the firm. Economica , 4 , 386–405, 1937), economics has developed a whole family of theories that focus on the ability of firms to economize on certain costs of using markets. More recently, researchers in strategic management have published several theories of the firm that have tended to emphasize the benefits of incorporation rather than the costs of using the market. Although researchers in the strategy profession have tentatively labeled their work as 'moving towards' a strategic theory of the firm, economists have been very critical of existing approaches. This paper seeks to begin 'arriving' at a strategic theory of the firm by addressing these criticisms and offering an integration of the strategic and economic perspectives within an institutional framework. The paper concludes with future directions for research in the theory of the firm.     

RESIDENTIAL MORTGAGE RISK CHARACTERISTICS*

This paper applies discriminant analysis to a relatively large sample of residential mortgages-some of which have defaulted or have been foreclosed and others of which have remained untroubled at least until the date of the last observation-in an attempt to derive a function which would allow mortgage lenders to increase their accuracy of predicting mortgage difficulty. From the data available for testing, no improvement in predictability is obtained, because it is thought that the data may already have been badly biased by the screening process of the loan officers which had already taken place and by the post-loan origination nature of the important variables in mortgage difficulty. The latter is confirmed by discriminant models of post-origination variables which are successful. It is concluded that changes in home value, changes in mortgagor income, mortgage assumption, and regional economic considerations are the major explanations of mortgage difficulty.     

A Social Cognitive Framework for Career Choice Counseling

This article extends social cognitive career theory by suggesting how several of its major hypotheses can be applied to counseling persons with career choice difficulties. Several theory-derived counseling strategies are described that can be used to assist clients in developing a broad array of career options, analyzing and overcoming barriers to career choice, and counteracting choice-limiting self-efficacy beliefs. Each strategy is illustrated with a case example. Future research needs related to the counseling model are discussed.     

Farm Parents' Attitudes Towards Farm Safety Experts*

Abstract Using both qualitative and quantitative data, this article analyzes farm parents' attitudes towards the trustworthiness, usefulness, and use of advice from farm safety experts. The article evaluates four different perspectives on trust in expert: the Validity of Knowledge perspective, the Salient Values Similarity perspective, the Diffusion of Innovation perspective, and the Local Knowledge perspective. Among other factors, the results show that negative attitudes towards experts are strongly influenced by attitudes towards the validity of scientific knowledge vs. farm experience. They also show that experts who are more involved in farm production have higher levels of trust and usefulness. While all of the perspectives receive some degree of support, the results suggest that local knowledge and culture are critical in shaping attitudes towards experts. Attitudes towards experts are shaped not solely by expert characteristics but by the meanings and significance they assume in specific socio‐cultural contexts.