“Everything That We Can Do”: A Content Analysis of the Protective Strategies Used by GLBTQ Parents

Despite increased access to parenting rights through legal marriage and adoption, U.S. gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) parents continue to experience varying levels of support for their families. This study explored protective strategies, or actions taken to meet one's safety needs when vulnerable, that GLBTQ parents pursue. This study included 454 GLBTQ parents from a national survey. Participants' open-ended responses about protective strategies were extracted from the survey and analyzed using content analysis. Responses were coded into 10 categories capturing strategies GLBTQ parents used to protect their families. While strategies utilizing legal supports were common, the most cited strategies were symbolic strategies, including creating a family name and developing written statements of parent wishes. Exploratory analyses revealed no difference in mean number of strategies used between parents who reported having legal status as a parent through adoption or listing on the birth certificate and those without legal parenting status. These results suggest that GLBTQ parents, regardless of their legal parenting status, take intentional measures to achieve a sense of safety and increase social support. The findings reiterate the importance of both legal and social support of GLBTQ parents.     

Measuring underemployment and inequality in the work force

In a recent article in this journal, Tipps and Gordon (1985) presented new indicators of underemployment and compared them to indicators obtained from the Labor Utilization Framework (LUF) of Hauser, Sullivan, Clogg, and others. In this note the Tipps-Gordon criticisms of LUF are reviewed, the Tipps-Gordon framework is criticized, and both LUF and the Tipps-Gordon approach are compared empirically as well as conceptually. An extension of LUF is also presented.     

Returns to Schooling in Spain: How Reliable are Instrumental Variable Estimates?

This paper studies the ordinary least–squares (OLS) and instrumental variable (IV) estimates of the returns to schooling for male workers in Spain. OLS estimates are often biased due to the endogeneity of schooling, measurement errors or omitted variables. Proper IV estimates correct this bias. The reliability of family background, natural experiments (based on changes in the education system and season of birth) and the availability of a college in the province is checked using Spanish data. The results suggest that background and college availability are valid instruments and that the IV estimates of the returns to schooling are higher than OLS estimates. These results are in line with the majority of previous results in the literature.     

Risk Target: An Interactive Context Factor in Risk Perception

The effect of specification of the target on risk evaluation was examined. A whole set of hazards, covering most of the domains, were considered: common individual hazards, outdoor activities, medical care, public transportation, energy production, pollutants, sex, deviance, and addictions. Three human targets were introduced: personal health risk (including personal risk of death), health risk for people in the country, and health risk for people in the world. The basic design was a between-subjects design. The first hypothesis was that risk judgments made in the "world" condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "country" condition, and risk judgments made in this condition should be higher than risk judgments made in the "personal" condition. This is what was observed. The second hypothesis was that the target effect should differ as a function of the kind of hazards considered. This also is what was observed. In two domains--pollutants, and deviance, sex, and addictions--the target effect was important. It corresponded to about one-tenth of the response scale. In the four remaining domains, the target effect was unimportant or absent.     

The influence of top management support for ICTs on organisational performance through knowledge acquisition,transfer, and utilisation

This research analyses, first, whether top management support for information and communications technologies has positive consequences for knowledge management by analysing the specific influence of top management support for ICTs on each of the knowledge management processes (knowledge acquisition, transfer, and utilisation). Second, it analyses the influence of each knowledge management process on organisational performance. The theoretical model is tested using data collected from March to May 2010 from 201 CEOs in Spanish technology organisations. The results indicate that the stage-based disaggregation of the knowledge management process into knowledge acquisition, transfer, and utilisation, and the three-stage management process are the mediating mechanisms in the relationship between top management support for ICTs and organisational performance. CEOs should thus support the information and communication technologies necessary to improve all of the interrelated stages of knowledge management as a mechanism for achieving better organisational performance. Various strategic actions should be stimulated within the organisation to intensify the interrelation between these stages of acquisition, transfer, and utilisation of knowledge.     

Management innovation,pro-innovation organisational culture and enterprise performance: testing the mediation effect

The interest in management innovation (MI) is growing and the conviction about its significant role in boosting an enterprise’s competitive advantage and performance has recently gained ground. The studies on MI and its relationships with enterprise performance, which are relatively scarce in literature, indicate the complexity of these relationships. This inspired us to propose the management innovation construct and its operationalisation, which allowed for the empirical verification of the relationships between management innovation and enterprise performance. Simultaneously, we adopted the hypothesis on the mediating role of pro-innovation organisational culture. The aim of this article, therefore, is to study the relationships between MI and enterprise performance as well as to determine what role is played by pro-innovation organisational culture in these relationships. In order to do that, we conducted a survey of 301 companies based in Poland. Our research results confirmed the existence of relationships between management innovation and enterprise performance in the survey sample, although they were not very strong. Additionally, the hypothesis about the mediating role of organisational culture was also partially supported. The results of our study enrich the knowledge about the role of MI in stimulating enterprise performance and the role of pro-innovation organisational culture. We also discuss the implications for further research and management practice.     

Recent progress in mathematics and engineering on optimal graph labellings with distance conditions

The problem of radio channel assignments with multiple levels of interference can be modelled using graph theory. The theory of integer vertex-labellings of graphs with distance conditions has been investigated for several years now, and the authors recently introduced a new model of real number labellings that is giving deeper insight into the problems. Here we present an overview of the recent outpouring of papers in the engineering literature on such channel assignment problems, with the goal of strengthening connections to applications. Secondly, we present a new contribution to the theory, the formulas for the optimal span of labellings with conditions at distance two for finite complete bipartite graphs. Dedicated to Professor Frank K. Hwang on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Research supported in part by NSF grants DMS-0072187 and DMS-0302307. An early version of this paper was presented at the CTS Conference on Combinatorics and its Applications in May, 2005, at Chiao Tung University, HsinChu, Taiwan. The first author is grateful to the CTS for its support of his travel.     

Application of Correspondence Analysis in the Assessment of Mine Tailings Dam Breakage Risk in the Mediterranean Region

A new statistical approach for preliminary risk evaluation of breakage in tailings dam is presented and illustrated by a case study regarding the Mediterranean region. The objective of the proposed method is to establish an empirical scale of risk, from which guidelines for prioritizing the collection of further specific information can be derived. The method relies on a historical database containing, in essence, two sets of qualitative data: the first set concerns the variables that are observable before the disaster (e.g., type and size of the dam, its location, and state of activity), and the second refers to the consequences of the disaster (e.g., failure type, sludge characteristics, fatalities categorization, and downstream range of damage). Based on a modified form of correspondence analysis, where the second set of attributes are projected as "supplementary variables" onto the axes provided by the eigenvalue decomposition of the matrix referring to the first set, a "qualitative regression" is performed, relating the variables to be predicted (contained in the second set) with the "predictors" (the observable variables). On the grounds of the previously derived relationship, the risk of breakage in a new case can be evaluated, given observable variables. The method was applied in a case study regarding a set of 13 test sites where the ranking of risk obtained was validated by expert knowledge. Once validated, the procedure was included in the final output of the e-EcoRisk UE project (A Regional Enterprise Network Decision-Support System for Environmental Risk and Disaster Management of Large-Scale Industrial Spills), allowing for a dynamic historical database updating and providing a prompt rough risk evaluation for a new case. The aim of this section of the global project is to provide a quantified context where failure cases occurred in the past for supporting analogue reasoning in preventing similar situations.