Retirement Planning Among Hispanics: In God’s Hands?

We conducted a qualitative study on retirement preparedness among middle-aged and older low-income Hispanics in Los Angeles. Data were derived from four focus groups conducted in the greater Los Angeles area. Findings demonstrate how behavioral and cultural factors—family experiences, religiosity, and denial of retirement—explain the lack of savings and preparedness for retirement. Findings also indicate that the majority of participants want to be economically independent and to keep working until they are unable to do so. Participants helped their parents financially but did not feel comfortable asking their own children for help. Instead, participants placed their survival in retirement “in God’s hands.”     

The role of social networks for careers

The aim of this report is to elaborate on the centrality of social networks in the professional context (professional networks) of organizations. Professional networks are a career-relevant resource often called social capital. Social capital from professional networks entail relationships to colleagues or other departments, and can provide relevant and timely information or resources required for advancement on tasks and objectives. We will introduce different types of professional networks such as leadership networks, developmental networks or buy-in networks. Furthermore, the importance of professional networks for employees as well as employers will be explained. For employees, we will also provide information on the relevance of professional networks at different career stages.     

Kitwood's thought and relational social work

Tom Kitwood is a key figure in the development of thought about dementia, but generally no references are made to his work outside of elderly care. This article argues that Kitwood's thought has much to offer to all the professional caregivers, regardless of the users’ category they are caring for, and to the broader field of professional social work. Some key themes from the writings of Kitwood are examined, namely the critique of the ‘standard paradigm’; the conception of malignant social psychology; the respect for otherness in the positive person work; the person with dementia as a resource for reciprocity processes; the new culture of dementia. For each of these issues similarities between Kitwood's approach and relational social work are identified. Relational social work considers the helping process and the well-being development as co-constructions, in which the contributions not only by the helper (or the caregiver, or the social worker), but also by the helpee (or by the care recipient, or by the user) are essential: both at the same time are helped and helpers, and both are empowered by this. This idea—of great value to all social work fields—is remarkably close to the Kitwood's thought about the dementia care.     

Knowledge management in product innovation: an interpretative review

Knowledge management (KM) is relatively new, but still a very hot topic in management research and practice. Leading companies are reshaping their organizations in order to increase their ability in managing knowledge sharing and transfer within and across their organizational boundaries. KM is today considered by many scholars the next arena for global competition. Product innovation (PI), in particular, is one of the most promising areas, where KM is today applied and studied. Management literature has underlined how knowledge becomes the only source of sustainable competitive advantage in turbulent contexts, and the cognitive perspective represents the most adequate approach to analysing and understanding PI as a continuous learning process rather than as a sporadic event. Since the early 1990s, many contributions emerged from different fields, but after nearly one decade, KM is not yet a unitary stream of literature but reflects very diverse roots. In this paper, the different streams and approaches emerging in literature on KM in PI are reviewed and described, aiming at providing researchers with an interpretative tool and some directions for further research.     

Cluster‐Specific Variable Selection for Product Partition Models

We propose a random partition model that implements prediction with many candidate covariates and interactions. The model is based on a modified product partition model that includes a regression on covariates by favouring homogeneous clusters in terms of these covariates. Additionally, the model allows for a cluster‐specific choice of the covariates that are included in this evaluation of homogeneity. The variable selection is implemented by introducing a set of cluster‐specific latent indicators that include or exclude covariates. The proposed model is motivated by an application to predicting mortality in an intensive care unit in Lisboa, Portugal.     

Analysis of the lifted weight including height and frequency factors for workers in Colombia

Factors related to the height of the load and the frequency of handling have become a way to predict the acceptable standard weight lifted for workers whose main task is the manual lifting of materials and measuring the conditions is important to determine a maximum weight lifted. This study was conducted to twenty (20) workers between eighteen (18) and forty (40) years old with a minimum six months experience and belonging to the warehouse and packaging area of a dairy products company. Consideration was given to three different heights such as knuckle, shoulder and total height as well as frequencies of 2, 4 and 6 times per minute. Average values for lifted weight were 17.9306 ± 2.37 kg. The conclusions and recommendations included a review of legislation related to Colombian maximum acceptable weight of lifting due to the current law does not match the acceptable weight handled in this research.     

Equilibria with vector-valued utilities and preference information. The analysis of a mixed duopoly

This paper deals with the equilibria of games when the agents have multiple objectives and, therefore, their utilities cannot be represented by a single value, but by a vector containing the various dimensions of the utility. Our approach allows the incorporation of partial information about the preferences of the agents into the model, and permits the identification of the set of equilibria in accordance with this information. We also propose an additional conservative criterion which can be applied in this framework in order to predict the results of interaction. The potential application of the theoretical results is shown with an analysis of a mixed oligopoly in which the agents value additional objectives other than their own benefit. These objectives are related to social welfare and to the profit of the industry. The flexibility of our approach provides a general theoretical framework for the analysis of a wide range of strategic economic models.     

Let’s go out for a drink after work! The relation between leisure time spent with colleagues and employees’ life satisfaction

Despite the tremendous research studying the factors that influence employees’ well-being, the effect of what happens when leisure time is spent with colleagues remains yet unexamined. Building on the Conversation of Resource Theory, we propose that leisure time spent with colleagues could be understood as a resource, especially for those individuals who have few friends at their workplace. In a cross-sectional design, 136 university employees provided information about the number of friends they have at work, the amount of leisure time spent with befriended colleagues, and their life satisfaction. Results suggest that a larger network of friends at work is positively associated with life satisfaction. Furthermore, the effect of the number of friends at work on life satisfaction is moderated by the amount of leisure time spent with befriended colleagues. Employees who have few friends at work report more life satisfaction, if they spend more leisure time with befriended colleagues, whereas such an effect was not found for employees with a large friend network at work. These results are placed into the context of current discussions about work-life-blending.     

A Case Study Evaluating the Risk of Infection from Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) in a Hospital Setting Through Bioaerosols

Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, an emerging viral infection with a global case fatality rate of 35.5%, caused major outbreaks first in 2012 and 2015, though new cases are continuously reported around the world. Transmission is believed to mainly occur in healthcare settings through aerosolized particles. This study uses Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment to develop a generalizable model that can assist with interpreting reported outbreak data or predict risk of infection with or without the recommended strategies. The exposure scenario includes a single index patient emitting virus‐containing aerosols into the air by coughing, leading to short‐ and long‐range airborne exposures for other patients in the same room, nurses, healthcare workers, and family visitors. Aerosol transport modeling was coupled with Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the risk of MERS illness for the exposed population. Results from a typical scenario show the daily mean risk of infection to be the highest for the nurses and healthcare workers (8.49 × 10^?4 and 7.91 × 10^?4, respectively), and the lowest for family visitors and patients staying in the same room (3.12 × 10^?4 and 1.29 × 10^?4, respectively). Sensitivity analysis indicates that more than 90% of the uncertainty in the risk characterization is due to the viral concentration in saliva. Assessment of risk interventions showed that respiratory masks were found to have a greater effect in reducing the risks for all the groups evaluated (>90% risk reduction), while increasing the air exchange was effective for the other patients in the same room only (up to 58% risk reduction).