The impact of external,internal, and dual relational embeddedness on the innovation performance of foreign subsidiaries: Evidence from a developing country

As parts of a global network, foreign-owned subsidiaries enjoy privileged access to knowledge sources both internal (within their multinational group) and external (involving other organizations in the host location), and this has proven especially relevant in their assumption of greater creative responsibilities that increase the technological capabilities of their multinational group. This study investigates whether external and internal relational embeddedness are mutually reinforcing (complementary) or whether they act separately in explaining superior innovation performance of foreign-owned subsidiaries in terms of a greater propensity to obtain radical innovations. The empirical analysis uses both direct and indirect tests to evaluate the complementarity, as well as a rich firm-level panel data on foreign subsidiaries, extracted from a census of Colombian manufacturing firms for the period 2008–2014. Our findings reveal that external relational embeddedness in isolation (without internal embeddedness) has a positive impact on performance only in terms of incremental innovation, while internal embeddedness alone (without external embeddedness) has no effect on the innovation performance of subsidiaries. However, we find that a complementary and dynamic relationship exists between external and internal linkages to spur radical innovation outcomes, which in turn are related to the competence-creating roles in foreign subsidiaries as prior literature has shown.     

Urban poverty and labor market dynamics in five Latin American countries: 2003–2008

Latin America experienced a long period of sustained growth since 2003 that positively impacted social and labor market indicators, including poverty. This paper contributes to the understanding of this process as it carries out a comparative study of poverty dynamics in five Latin American countries during 2003–2008. It analyzes the extent to which countries with different levels of poverty incidence diverge in terms of poverty exit and entry rates, identifies the relative importance of the frequency and impact of events associated to poverty transitions and examines how these events affect households with different characteristics. For this, a dynamic analysis of panel data is carried out using regular household surveys. Sizeable rates of poverty movements were observed in all five countries and it was found that a large proportion of household experienced positive events, mainly related to the labor market; however, only a small fraction of them actually exited poverty. Demographic events and public cash transfers proved to be of little relevance; in particular, the latter did not contribute much either to intensify poverty exits or to prevent poverty entries. Households with children experienced more (less) negative (positive) events than those without children. It appeared therefore that even when the economy behaved reasonably well at the aggregate level, high levels of labor turnover and income mobility (even of a negative nature) still prevail, mainly associated to the high level of precariousness and the undeveloped system of social protection that characterize the studied countries.     

The relational costs of crossing class lines

How do low socioeconomic status students navigate cross-class interactions in extremely unequal contexts? Previous research has described the high costs of college integration for underprivileged students, which in turn, negatively impact academic performance and general wellbeing. These studies tend to concentrate on cultural capital costs, such as catching up with assumed middle-class or elite capital and dealing with two worlds. Less has been said about social capital costs, the costs of making friends, especially more privileged friends. Through 61 in-depth interviews with various types of students as part of a broader ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the experiences of low-income scholarship holders in an elite institution in a very unequal society, Colombia. Rather than isolating themselves or resorting to safe homophilic relations, they faced their new elite environment engaging with the hidden relational cost of making friends with more affluent students. In so doing, they had to overcome fears and experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions, as well as cultural and economic capital barriers, and employed either camouflaging or disclosure strategies, sometimes becoming culturally and socially omnivorous. Symbolic belonging to the institution and the acquisition of middle-class cultural capital were among the benefits that made overcoming the costs worthy. Our results shed light on what institutions can do to reduce the costs for underprivileged students and, theoretically, unveil an important mechanism and barrier for social mobility: building cross-class ties.     

Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working-class women

One of the defining features of the home credit sector is the role played by its agents—workers who act as intermediaries between lending companies and borrowers to facilitate lending and collect repayments. There is a prevailing and pervasive narrative in the sector that women make superior agents, largely based on the belief that female agents can manage relationships with borrowers more successfully than their male counterparts. This article analyzes data from 349,078 home credit accounts (loans), as well as 71 interviews with home credit agents and lending company managers, to evaluate both the myths and realities of women's roles in home credit. The data is also used to explore the opportunities for—and potential constraints on—women's career progression in home credit work, based on an understanding of the moral economy in which they operate. By exploring the moral economy of low-income communities, the article highlights the role of working-class women's cultural capital within the labor market. Despite women forming the majority of the agent workforce in home credit, women's capital is undervalued in comparison with their male counterparts' capital. The analysis within this article allows a greater understanding of the highly classed and gendered nature of the moral economy of low-income communities and the exchange value of women's capital within the labor market.     

Academic Engagement and Achievement Predict Career Adaptability

Abundant evidence indicates that personality, social, cultural, and contextual factors predict career adaptability. However, little research attends to the roles of academic engagement and achievement in career adaptability, especially in non‐Western cultural contexts. We examined the associations of perceived academic engagement dimensions (i.e., behavioral and emotional engagement) and academic achievement with facets of career adaptability among 324 Filipino high school students. Results of hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate that, after controlling for age and gender, behavioral engagement served as the strongest predictor of concern, curiosity, confidence, and control. In addition, perceived academic achievement was the weakest predictor of career adaptability dimensions. Our findings underscore the benefits of integrating active involvement in school‐related tasks to foster career adaptability in high school student populations.     

Trends in Inequality of Opportunity for Developing Countries: Does the Economic Indicator Matter?

Social Indicators Research - The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the behaviour of Inequality of Opportunity (IOp henceforth) in developing countries. The analysis is carried out using...     

Employability,Poverty and the Spheres of Sociability – Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

Policymakers in the UK and beyond have sought to promote interventions to encourage social capital‐building among disadvantaged groups. One specific concern is that those with limited access to social capital/social network relationships will be at greater risk of experiencing both unemployment and poverty. By analyzing longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we seek to identify significant relationships between poverty and the likelihood of entering employment, and different measures of ‘sociability’ and social isolation. Crucially, we discuss if and how measures of sociability/social isolation are associated with jobseekers' varying chances of exiting and re‐entering work and how this varies with their experience of poverty. These issues are important because if sociability impacts on the likelihood of entering employment from a state of worklessness, then policymakers need to understand how cycles of social and labour market exclusion are associated with the rates of entering employment in order to develop effective interventions to improve jobseekers' employability and combat poverty. Following an analysis of BHPS data, we identify lessons for policy for combating long‐term unemployment and promoting social inclusion.     

The dynamics of returns to education in Uganda: National and subnational trends

We assess empirically the changes in returns to education at the subnational level in Uganda using the Uganda National Household Surveys for 2002–3 and 2005–6. Our results indicate that average returns to schooling tended to converge across regions in the last decade. The overall trend in convergence of returns to schooling took place at all levels of educational attainment and this behaviour in returns to education is mostly driven by the dynamics of returns to schooling in urban areas. We analyse subnational convergence in returns to education and unveil deviant dynamics in Northern Uganda. We discuss the potential challenges to inclusive economic growth in Uganda which are implied by our results.     

Interrupted aspirations: research and policy on Gitano education in a time of recession,in Spain

During the past decade, Gitano students’ school success and its cultural, social and emotional consequences have been largely unexplored, particularly in a new context: the deep economic crisis in Spain. This study reviews and analyses the evolution of the research production and the changing contexts of policy trends affecting the ‘Roma education issue’ as they have developed in Spain during the past decade (2004–2014). The authors take as a starting point the groundbreaking study published in 2004 that focused on trajectories of educational achievement and continuity among Gitano youth, and go on to reconstruct the approaches undertaken by qualitative, quantitative and evaluation research since then, in relation to their contributions to improve policy recommendations. The role played by Spanish and European social and educational strategies addressed to the Gitano/Roma population is critically explored to challenge the controversial notion of a ‘Spanish model of Roma integration’. Finally, the authors argue that the deterioration of public education and the virtual disappearance of social benefits in recent years, in addition to the worrying actions taken against Roma citizens in the EU, are to account for the interrupted aspirations of a whole generation of Gitano/Roma youth.     

Optimum design-based ratio estimators of the distribution function

The ratio method is commonly used to the estimation of means and totals. This method was extended to the problem of estimating the distribution function. An alternative ratio estimator of the distribution function is defined. A result that compares the variances of the aforementioned ratio estimators is used to define optimum design-based ratio estimators of the distribution function. Different empirical results indicate that the optimum ratio estimators can be more efficient than alternative ratio estimators. In addition, we show by simulations that alternative ratio estimators can have large biases, whereas biases of the optimum ratio estimators are negligible in this situation.