Rock ‘n’ Roll Music as a Timepiece

This essay illustrates the value of time in understanding baby boomers' experiences of rock ‘n’ roll. In a distinctively interactionist style, I use time as a sensitizing concept in my research on this phenomenon. The orientation that guides this research is methodological tourism, by which the researcher treats something as common and taken‐for‐granted as rock ‘n’ roll music in everyday life as strange if not exotic. Structurally, songs about time constitute the most visible temporal structures in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. Interactionally, I will argue that the concept of the cohort is more useful than that of the decade for an interpretive analysis of musical nostalgia, a key feature of the phenomenon in question. Illustrations of the reflexive relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and time in middle age include using awareness of recent deaths of rock ‘n’ roll performers to interpret the existential significance of aging; using rock ‘n’ roll songs as benchmarks for significant events such as birthdays and anniversaries, as well as gift giving for these events; and using rock ‘n’ roll music to pass the time.     

Economic Reform in the Czech Republic: Economic Strain,Depression, Hostility,and the Difference Gender Makes*

The Czech Republic is changing rapidly and its current economic transformation is a strain on Czech families. In this study, the connection between economic strain and individual well-being is investigated via mailed questionnaires from 234 households in the Czech Republic. For Czech women, depression rises more with economic strain than does hostility, while Czech men become more hostile than depressed in the face of economic strain. For women, social support is a buffer between economic strain and hostility, whereas self-esteem is a buffer for depression. For men, both self-esteem and social support exacerbate hostility in the context of economic strain.     

A discordant consolidation of the self in a late adolescent male

A distinction is made between the cohesive self and the nuclear self. The latter represents a consolidation of the self that occurs in late adolescence and that results from the integration of life goals and ambitions into a coherent narrative. This paper presents a case in which a pseudo-consolidation appears to have occurred in an adolescent with an undiagnosed learning disability.Ms. Silbar is in private practice.     

A graphical summary of disparities in health care and related summary measures

In order to assess the effectiveness of government programs designed to reduce disparities in the health care minority groups receive relative to the majority white population, a proper statistical measure should be used. This article proposes a measure of and its accompanying graph, which is readily interpretable and is not affected by the number of minority subgroups examined.     

Problem gambling and policy advice: The mutability and relative effects of structural,associational and attitudinal variables

Research on gambling has the double mandate of public service and the advancement of science. This paper is meant to carry forward that mandate. Latent in research on the causes of problem gambling is the policy insight that these causes represent different types of phenomena and are unequally mutable to practitioners' efforts to prevent and/or treat problem gambling. By making the issue of mutability manifest in research, findings from research would have more policy relevance and practical import. Data from a 1989 Iowa survey on lottery play and problem gambling are analyzed to illustrate this point. 1,226 respondents were contacted by phone and phone interviews were completed with 1,011 of these 1,226 eligible respondents. With multiple regression, we assessed the contributions of mutable and immutable variables to the explained variance in problem gambling. The results show mutable correlates explain enough variance in problem gambling to recommend their consideration in treatment/prevention. The results also suggest a social as well as a psychological etiology to problem gambling. Future research should, however, do a more complete comparison of social and psychological causes of problem gambling.This research was partially supported by the Iowa Department of Human Services and the National Institute of Mental Health (1 R01 MH50369-01A1). The authors wish to thank Willis Goudy, anonymous readers and the editor of this journal for helpful comments.     

Rates of pathological gambling in publicly funded outpatient substance abuse treatment

Rates of problem or probable pathological gambling were assessed in substance abusers seeking outpatient treatment in a publicly funded outpatient substance abuse treatment program. The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) was administered to 467 consecutive admissions at three different sites. Problem gamblers comprised 6.2 percent of the total (n=29), and 4.5 percent scored as probable pathological gamblers (n=21). These rates are two and one-half times greater than would be expected according to a recent state survey using the SOGS. Implications for assessment and treatment of problem gambling are discussed.The author expresses his appreciation to John Ramsay and the staff of Epoch Counseling Center for data collection; to Les Franklin for computational analysis; and Dr. Rachel Volberg for providing supplemental data from her Maryland State Gambling Survey.     

The ecosystem blueprint: How firms shape the design of an ecosystem according to the surrounding conditions

Ecosystems are formed by organisations that jointly create a value proposition that a single firm could not create in isolation. To deliver this value proposition, the partners need a focal firm, the orchestrator, to be align them towards the joint value proposition. Thus, how orchestrators design the alignment structure of an ecosystem is at the very heart of the ecosystem concept – yet it has not been sufficiently addressed by extant research. This is all the more true for the question of how the design of an ecosystem is shaped depending on surrounding conditions. This paper applies a qualitative study with ten cases and, based on the attention-based view of the firm, contributes to research on ecosystems in several ways. First, it explains which ecosystem designs are beneficial under which conditions. Second, it elucidates the structure and activities within ecosystems and shows that start-ups can be just as good ecosystem orchestrators as incumbents. Third, it explains the circumstances under which single vs. multi orchestrator ecosystems occur. Fourth, it presents the conditions when incumbents or start-ups make better orchestrators. Finally, it is among the first studies to apply the attention-based view to business ecosystems, and shows that doing so yields intriguing insights into this emerging field of research.     

Institutional Voids,Economic Adversity and Inter‐firm Cooperation in an Emerging Market: The Mediating Role of Government R&D Support

This paper examines the mediating mechanism of the relationship between institutional voids (IVs) and inter‐firm cooperation and the moderating role of economic adversity in the context of small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) based in emerging markets. The hypotheses are tested using time‐lagged survey data from 214 SMEs in Ghana. The findings provide support for the hypotheses by showing that: (1) IVs positively influence the use of government research and development (R&D) support; (2) the use of government R&D support mediates the relationship between IVs and inter‐firm cooperation; and (3) economic adversity positively moderates the relationship between IVs and the use of government R&D support. The findings contribute to understanding the role of IVs in inter‐firm cooperation. The wider implications for theory and practice are examined.