Managing Organizational Culture: Compliance or Genuine Change?

The issue of managing culture is of key importance within management theory and practice. A number of extant studies have found that attempts to 'manage' culture frequently degenerate into the enforcement of espoused behaviours. The objective of this paper is to provide empirical evidence and discussion of the consequences of management attempts to change culture. The paper reviews existing theory pertaining to organizational culture change and presents the desire to control as the rationale for management attempts to modify culture. After a brief discussion of the research design and methodology employed, the findings of a single case study are presented. The findings suggest that within the case study organization, a recent change initiative had resulted in changes to material manifestations, behaviours and in some cases values. However, it is noted that modifications to values could be the result of 'instrumental value compliance'. The paper culminates with conclusions, implications and suggestions for further research.     

Convergence properties of the expected improvement algorithm with fixed mean and covariance functions

This paper deals with the convergence of the expected improvement algorithm, a popular global optimization algorithm based on a Gaussian process model of the function to be optimized. The first result is that under some mild hypotheses on the covariance function k of the Gaussian process, the expected improvement algorithm produces a dense sequence of evaluation points in the search domain, when the function to be optimized is in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space generated by k  . The second result states that the density property also holds for P-almost$\mathsf{P}\text{-almost}$ all continuous functions, where P is the (prior) probability distribution induced by the Gaussian process.     

“Super-covariates”: Using predicted control group outcome as a covariate in randomized clinical trials

The power of randomized controlled clinical trials to demonstrate the efficacy of a drug compared with a control group depends not just on how efficacious the drug is, but also on the variation in patients' outcomes. Adjusting for prognostic covariates during trial analysis can reduce this variation. For this reason, the primary statistical analysis of a clinical trial is often based on regression models that besides terms for treatment and some further terms (e.g., stratification factors used in the randomization scheme of the trial) also includes a baseline (pre-treatment) assessment of the primary outcome. We suggest to include a “super-covariate”—that is, a patient-specific prediction of the control group outcome—as a further covariate (but not as an offset). We train a prognostic model or ensembles of such models on the individual patient (or aggregate) data of other studies in similar patients, but not the new trial under analysis. This has the potential to use historical data to increase the power of clinical trials and avoids the concern of type I error inflation with Bayesian approaches, but in contrast to them has a greater benefit for larger sample sizes. It is important for prognostic models behind “super-covariates” to generalize well across different patient populations in order to similarly reduce unexplained variability whether the trial(s) to develop the model are identical to the new trial or not. In an example in neovascular age-related macular degeneration we saw efficiency gains from the use of a “super-covariate”.     

Religious Affiliation,Religiosity, and Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Parenting

Legalizing marriage and facilitating access to parenting for same-sex couples are controversial subjects in many countries. Based on a survey of 1,861 French heterosexual students, this study examined the effects of gender, methods gays and lesbians use to become parents, religious affiliation (Catholic vs. no religious affiliation), and religiosity (in Catholic participants) on attitudes to same-sex parenting. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 66 (M = 22.27, SD = 5.20), 67% were women, 31% described themselves as Catholic, and 69% had no religious affiliation. The results based on generalized estimating equation analyses indicate that women were more favorable to same-sex parenting than men and that participants across religious groups preferred “traditional” families composed of two, different-sex parents who do not use medically assisted procreation. Of all the methods same-sex couples use to become parents, respondents preferred adoption and rejected surrogacy. Furthermore, Catholic participants were less favorable of same-sex parenting in general than participants without religious affiliation. Higher levels of religiosity intensified that rejection. Gender does not mitigate this effect for Catholic participants, suggesting that religiosity plays a major and independent role in shaping attitudes to same-sex parenting.     

Civil Society Efficacy,Citizenship and Empowerment in Africa

This paper contributes to the debate on the limited efficacy of civil society in Africa. It examines the complex interface between notions of civil society and citizenship within the context of the postcolonial state in Africa. It argues that the bifurcated character of citizenship is implicated in the inefficacy of civil society. This is underlined by the limited achievements in social citizenship, aggravated by the economic crisis and neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s as well as the politics of regime sustenance. Political disengagement, drain on the moral content of public life and diminished collective orientation of citizens, aggravated conflicts within society, thereby, promoting a democratisation of disempowerment and a disorganised civil society.     

Perceptual Discrepancy Profiles of Social Competence and Their Interrelations With Depressive Symptoms Among Early Adolescents

We examined the perceptual discrepancy profiles between self‐ and peers, and self‐ and teacher evaluations of adolescents’ social competence (SC) and the interrelations of these profiles with self‐reported depressive symptoms. The participants were 390 Finnish lower secondary school pupils. Latent profile analysis revealed five classes of discrepancy profiles; adolescents with congruent perceptions, quite congruent perceptions, and positively discrepant perceptions of SC reported lower scores of depressive symptoms, whereas those with negatively and extremely positively discrepant perceptions of SC reported the highest scores of depressive symptoms. The larger the discrepancy between self‐ and others’ evaluations of SC were, the more depressive symptoms were reported. The results indicate that interventions designed to mitigate depression need to be tailored to individual needs.     

Associations of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior With Adolescent Academic Achievement

The Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 (N = 8,061) was used to investigated the joint associations of physical activity and sedentary behavior with academic achievement. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate how classes formed by latent class analysis (LCA) according to overall physical activity, sports club membership, viewing TV, using a computer, reading books and magazines, other sedentary activities, and sleep were associated with grade‐point average. When adjusted for gender, self‐rated health, and mother's education, physically active adolescents and generally active adolescents were about twice as likely to have high grade‐point average compared with sedentary TV viewers.     

Temporal Distributions of Crime and Disorder in Casino and Non-Casino Zones

Research on the relationship between casinos and crime has yielded mixed conclusions. Some authors argue that casinos are crime attractors and provide fertile grounds for disorder in the surrounding communities. Others claim that the impact of casinos on the crime problem has been over-stated and that casinos in themselves are not crime generators. Relying on calls for service and incidents known to the police, this research reveals the specific spatial and temporal characteristics of all criminal and disorderly behaviors around casino venues.

Aid Reduction and NGDOs’ Quest for Sustainability in Ghana: Can Philanthropic Institutions Serve as Alternative Resource Mobilisation Routes?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In recent years, there has been an increasing concern about non-governmental development organisations’ (NGDOs)...