A Reexamination of ‘Measuring the Congruence Between Market Requirements and Manufacturing: A Methodology and Illustration'*

This paper reexamines the idea of developing an index of manufacturing fit with market requirements. Bozarth and Berry's (1997) recent work provides a starting point. Several conceptual and methodological issues relating to the Bozarth and Berry approach are raised. It is argued that the indifference profile concept suggested by the authors bears reexamination.     

Spanish anarchist engagements in electoralism: from street to party politics

The eruption of the Spanish 15M movement in 2011 was marked by a high degree of political participation and creative experimentation. The political repertoire has constantly been re-evaluated, with methods revised and evolving, from the occupation of public spaces to the recent creation of new constitutional parties. One of the key aspects of these tactical revisions has been the involvement of anarchist actors in an experimental process of engagement in electoral processes, a method of political engagement anarchists standardly oppose. Our study identifies the motivations and theoretical justifications that have recently led libertarian activists to take the electoral path. This paper stands in the small but growing tradition of works that examine the recent phenomenon of new parties built by ‘street’ activists, but uniquely concentrates on a detailed case study of the anarchist actors linked to the platform Castelló en Moviment (CsM). It thus describes the anarchist influence in recent electoral developments, identifies proponents’ justifications for engaging in these previously rejected methods and highlights some of the doubts raised about the electoral experiment.     

Propensity‐score‐based priors for Bayesian augmented control design

Drug developers are required to demonstrate substantial evidence of effectiveness through the conduct of adequate and well‐controlled (A&WC) studies to obtain marketing approval of their medicine. What constitutes A&WC is interpreted as the conduct of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, these trials are sometimes unfeasible because of their size, duration, and cost. One way to reduce sample size is to leverage information on the control through a prior. One consideration when forming data‐driven prior is the consistency of the external and the current data. It is essential to make this process less susceptible to choosing information that only helps improve the chances toward making an effectiveness claim. For this purpose, propensity score methods are employed for two reasons: (1) it gives the probability of a patient to be in the trial, and (2) it minimizes selection bias by pairing together treatment and control within the trial and control subjects in the external data that are similar in terms of their pretreatment characteristics. Two matching schemes based on propensity scores, estimated through generalized boosted methods, are applied to a real example with the objective of using external data to perform Bayesian augmented control in a trial where the allocation is disproportionate. The simulation results show that the data augmentation process prevents prior and data conflict and improves the precision of the estimator of the average treatment effect.     

National Culture of Indulgence as Predictor of Prosocial Behavior: Governmental Effectiveness as Boundary Condition

Previous studies of national culture and prosocial behaviors have been limited to Hofstede’s five traditional culture dimensions. We introduce the fairly new and less studied cultural dimension of indulgence versus restraint (IVR) as a predictor of prosocial behaviors. We tested the effect of IVR on prosocial behavior over Hofstede’s previously studied dimensions. We also tested the moderating effect of government effectiveness on the relationship between indulgence and prosocial behavior. We crossed data for cultural dimensions from Hofstede with data from the world-giving index for prosocial behavior and data for government effectiveness from the World Bank. In total, eighty-seven countries entered our model. Indulgence predicted volunteering above the other researched cultural dimensions. It did not predict helping a stranger or donating. Among the cultural dimensions, only uncertainty avoidance was also significant in the prediction of volunteering. Uncertainty avoidance was the only cultural dimension that predicted donating. Individualism was not significant in the prediction of prosocial behaviors. Long-term orientation was the only cultural dimension that predicted helping a stranger (but not volunteering and donating) over other researched cultural dimensions. We found that government effectiveness is a boundary condition to the link between indulgent cultures and two prosocial behaviors (donating and helping a stranger but not for volunteering). Our results indicate that only in countries with high government effectiveness does indulgence predict prosocial behaviors, and not in cultures with low government effectiveness.

     

Interdisciplinary Work Is Essential for Research on Puberty: Complexity and Dynamism in Action

Puberty is associated with changes in behavior and psychosocial well‐being, and is important in lifelong health. We present five different facets regarding interdisciplinary research that are important to puberty. A short history of philosophical issues instrumental in promoting early interdisciplinary research is first presented. We discuss then what is hard and what is easy about interdisciplinary research, the purpose of which is to alert scientists to challenges and opportunities for interdisciplinary research on puberty. Readers then are introduced to advances and obstacles in interdisciplinary research on development. Recommendations for tailoring graduate education toward interdisciplinarity are introduced. Finally, issues related to publication, education of scientists, and policy makers are described. The report concludes with a discussion of funding and policy issues.     

Required and obtained equity returns in privately held businesses: the impact of family nature—evidence before and after the global economic crisis

This paper analyses the impact that family businesses have on the minimum rate of return required by owner–investors (k _e ) and on the equity returns (ROEaT) obtained in privately held businesses. This influence is analysed for an economic growth period (2002–2007) and for a crisis period (2008–2013) in the European context. Moreover, our study also explores the family nature through the heterogeneity among family firms in their required and obtained equity returns by considering the degree of family involvement in the ownership and management. Our findings reveal that while family businesses always have a negative and significant impact on k _e regardless of the economic environment, they only have a positive and significant impact on ROEaT in economic upturns. Thus, non-economic goals do not necessarily imply underperformance but may involve a lower cost of equity capital in privately held family businesses than in privately held non-family businesses, which also leads to differences in the value creation.     

Efficient separate class of estimators of population mean in stratified random sampling

In this paper, efficient class of estimators for population mean using two auxiliary variates is suggested. It has been shown that the suggested estimator is more efficient than usual unbiased estimator in stratified random sampling, usual ratio and product-type estimators, Tailor and Lone (2012 Tailor, R. and Lone, H. A. (2012). Separate ratio-cum- product estimators of finite population mean using auxiliary information. J. Rajasthan Stat. Assoc. 1(2):94–102. [Google Scholar], 2014) estimators, and other considered estimators. The bias and mean-squared error of the suggested estimator are obtained up to the first degree of approximation. Conditions under which the suggested estimator is more efficient than other considered estimators are obtained. An empirical study has been carried out to demonstrate the performances of the suggested estimator.     

Copro-necrophagous beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) in urban areas: A global review

The world has become an urban world, more than 50 % of the human population live in cities. The effects of urbanization are diverse, complex and wide; ranging from unbalanced biogeochemical cycles in urban areas, to the local extinction of several species in different cities around the globe. However, diverse biological groups live and thrive in cities adapting to the new and sometimes harsh conditions of urban areas. In an effort to compile and assess the current status of knowledge of copro-necrophagous beetles in urban areas, we performed an extensive search for publications regarding Scarabaeinae beetles in urban areas. We found 27 publication that address four general topics: (1) ecological patterns; (2) disease transmission; (3) conservation biology; and (4) species lists. Although in the last fifteen years it has been published extensively about Scarabaeinae as an indicator group in biodiversity studies and in the analysis of ecosystem functions, references to Scarabaeinae in cities are scarce. In a broad sense, the study of copro-necrophagous beetles in urban areas is in an early stage of advance, providing an opportunity for entomologists to explore their response to urbanization, altogether with the role of these insects as host and intermediates of parasitic diseases, but also, with the environmental services provided by them, like the burial and destruction of a great amount of excrements found in urban soil.     

The capacity of elderly citizens to access digital media in Andalusia (Spain)

In most of the European Union (EU) countries, including Spain, there has been an increase in the number of inhabitants aged 55 years or older. As of 2014, in the EU (27) more than 65% of the population uses the internet daily. However, among the elderly, the percentage is drastically lower. This type of occurrence is found in technologically advanced societies, and turns the older citizens into a forgotten collective. With the digital divide (defined as physical access to the internet) surmounted in these countries, a new divide is becoming apparent in terms of personal use and societal participation. In this article, through the use of multivariate analysis techniques, we identify a new divide in Andalusia, Spain, with respect to the frequency of access to new media and the use citizens make of them. We will discuss the influence of the elderly's immediate environment as a source of opportunity for the Information and Communication Technologies to improve our quality of life and as a medium for more active social participation.