Alternative uses of temporary work and new forms of work organisation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the use of temporary workers and the adoption of new forms of work organisation (NFWO) in production. This study aims to understand to what extent these two forms of human resources flexibility are synergic or mutually exclusive. In order to answer this main goal, we discuss different levels of temporary workers adoption in relation to different levels of use of NFWO, the level of integration of temporary workers within the overall production organisation and the joint and synergistic use of NFWO and temporary work. Evidence drawn from seven case studies in manufacturing plants in northern Italy is provided. Results highlight that, according to the characteristics of the production process, temporary workers and NFWO are not mutually exclusive, that temporary workers can be integrated with other workers in the shop floor, and that NFWO can also be adopted for temporary workers. In addition, NFWO has been proven to be a key enabler to integrate temporary workers within the organisation, thus showing an important synergistic effect between the two human resource flexibility practices.     

Discussing the “big n problem”

When a large amount of spatial data is available computational and modeling challenges arise and they are often labeled as “big n problem”. In this work we present a brief review of the literature. Then we focus on two approaches, respectively based on stochastic partial differential equations and integrated nested Laplace approximation, and on the tapering of the spatial covariance matrix. The fitting and predictive abilities of using the two methods in conjunction with Kriging interpolation are compared in a simulation study.     

Social Capital in the LEADER Initiative: a methodological approach

This paper focuses on the introduction of a suitable method for the measurement of social capital in the context of rural development policies. We present an empirical application of the method to four case studies from the south of Italy. In order to overcome some limits affecting previous empirical research, we have grounded the measurement framework upon a clear decomposition of the concept of social capital characterizing three main dimensions: structural, relational and cognitive. This has allowed us to build five direct indicators for the core components of social capital created within the EU local agencies for rural development (the Local Action Groups). Moreover we have set a synthetic measure capturing the specific configuration of the internal social capital of the groups as a whole.     

COMMON FEATURES IN TIME SERIES WITH BOTH DETERMINISTIC AND STOCHASTIC SEASONALITY

This paper extends the notions of common cycles and common seasonal features to time series having deterministic and stochastic seasonality at different frequencies. The conditions under which quarterly time series with these characteristics have common features are investigated, various representations are presented and statistical inference is discussed. Finally, the analysis is applied to study comovements between different components of consumption and income using UK data.     

Stabilities of infant behaviors and maternal responses to them

Consistency in the order of individuals in a group across substantial lengths of time—stability—is a central concept in developmental science for several reasons. Stability underscores the meaningfulness of individual differences in psychological phenomena; stability informs about the origins, nature, and overall developmental course of psychological phenomena; stability signals individual status and so affects the environment, experience, and development; stability has both theoretical and clinical implications for individual functioning; and stability helps to establish that a measure constitutes a consequential individual‐differences metric. In this three‐wave prospective longitudinal study (Ns = 40 infants and mothers), we examined stabilities of individual variation in multiple infant behaviors and maternal responses to them across infant ages 10, 14, and 21 months. Medium to large effect size stabilities in infant behaviors and maternal responses emerged, but both betray substantial amounts of unshared variance. Documenting the ontogenetic trajectories of infant behaviors and maternal responses helps to elucidate the nature and structure of early human development.     

Bayesian hierarchical model for the prediction of football results

The problem of modelling football data has become increasingly popular in the last few years and many different models have been proposed with the aim of estimating the characteristics that bring a team to lose or win a game, or to predict the score of a particular match. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical model to fulfil both these aims and test its predictive strength based on data about the Italian Serie A 1991–1992 championship. To overcome the issue of overshrinkage produced by the Bayesian hierarchical model, we specify a more complex mixture model that results in a better fit to the observed data. We test its performance using an example of the Italian Serie A 2007–2008 championship.     

A conceptual framework of the adoption of innovations in organizations: a meta-analytical review of the literature

Journal of Management and Governance - Studies on the adoption of innovations in organizations are abundant and have introduced many different factors that are likely to influence adoption...     

Migration and students' performance: detecting geographical differences following a curves clustering approach

Students'' migration mobility is the new form of migration: students migrate to improve their skills and become more valued for the job market. The data regard the migration of Italian Bachelors who enrolled at Master Degree level, moving typically from poor to rich areas. This paper investigates the migration and other possible determinants on the Master Degree students'' performance. The Clustering of Effects approach for Quantile Regression Coefficients Modelling has been used to cluster the effects of some variables on the students'' performance for three Italian macro-areas. Results show evidence of similarity between Southern and Centre students, with respect to the Northern ones.