Where It's At! The Role of Best Friends and Peer Group Members in Young Adults' Alcohol Use

We examined the hypothesis that best friends and members from a broader peer group would not differ in the amount of influence they have on young adults' alcohol consumption and that what counts would be the mere presence of drinking peers in a given context—irrespective of the type of relationship such peers would have with the target young adult. Data were used from a naturalistic observation study that was conducted in a “bar‐lab” among 221 young adults aged 18–25 years. Both hierarchical and multilevel regression analyses showed that group effects (i.e., average group levels of alcohol consumption) explained young adults' drinking. When taking into account these group effects, best friends' alcohol consumption in the bar‐lab was a nonsignificant predictor of young adults' alcohol use—although best friends' questionnaire‐assessed drinking did predict alcohol consumption in the bar‐lab.     

The perceptions of human resource development professionals in Taiwan regarding their working relationships with subject matter experts (SMEs) during the training design process

While the literature supports the importance of establishing a relationship between designers and subject matter experts (SMEs) in the training design process, this approach is not followed in all global practices. The purpose of this study was to identify the perceptions of human resource development professionals in Taiwan regarding their working relationships with SMEs. The respondents of the study were HRD professionals who worked in high-tech companies located in a science park in Taiwan. The study found that a significant relationship exists between the ability to work with SMEs and current ability in the training design process among HRD professionals who had worked with SMEs. This study provides implications for the professional development of HRD practitioners and HRD practice in Taiwan companies. Cross-cultural issues are discussed to explain inconsistencies between the results and US-based perspectives on the training design process.     

New Governance and the Case of Activation Policies: Comparing Experiences in Denmark and the Netherlands

This article explores the importance of new forms of governance in active labour market policies (activation) in two countries: Denmark and the Netherlands. Drawing on research with key stakeholders in these countries, we analyse how new governance, and particularly processes of contracting-out and localization, have found expression in recent reforms to activation. We conclude that localization and contracting-out may have a future role to play in the development of more locally responsive and individually focused services. But both countries have encountered problems in promoting joined-up services through local jobcentres, while contracting-out has not always led to the tailored, individually focused services envisaged by policy-makers. In both countries, there are also concerns that the restriction of the Public Employment Service to a 'gatekeeping and signposting' role will lead to inconsistencies in the quality of services, exposing the most disadvantaged to greater social risk.     

Implications of Eurocentrism for Social Work Education: Trivialization vis-à-vis Skin Color

The significance of skin color among people of color and its relative absence in social work literature is arguably attributed to Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism defines human reality via Eurocentric norms, ideas, values and perspectives. Evidence of Eurocentrism in social work is contained in its literature priorities, skin color litigation, brown racism and skin bleaching. Demonstration of the aforementioned social pathologies involving skin color pertaining to people of color is a critical, existential phenomenon. If social work is to remain viable and be sustained in the future, it must conform to the dictates of changes in the population. That will require a commensurate adjustment and a willingness of its intelligentsia to accommodate skin color and other alternative views relative to education and practice.     

A characterisation of logistics networks for product recovery

Recovery of used products is receiving much attention recently due to growing environmental concern. Efficient implementation requires appropriate logistics structures to be set up for the arising goods flow from users to producers. We investigate the design of such logistics networks. As a basis for our analysis we review recent case studies on logistics network design for product recovery in different industries. We identify general characteristics of product recovery networks and compare them with traditional logistics structures. Moreover, we derive a classification scheme for different types of recovery networks.     

Racial Discrimination as a Moderator of the Links Among Stress,Maternal Psychological Functioning,and Family Relationships

This study focuses on the links between social contexts and normative family patterns to identify factors at the societal, community, family, and individual levels that enhance African Americans' ability to overcome stressful life events and foster positive family relationships. The Mundane Extreme Environmental Stress Model was used to explore these links. From urban and rural areas in Iowa and Georgia, 383 families with 10‐ or 11‐year‐old children were recruited. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. Maternal psychological distress was linked with parent‐child relationship quality both directly and indirectly through its association with intimate partnership quality. When racial discrimination was greater, stronger links emerged between stressor pileup and psychological distress, as well as between psychological distress and the quality of both intimate partnerships and parent‐child relationships. Future research on African American family processes should include the effects of racial discrimination.     

Bayesian prediction of waiting times in stochastic models

The authors show how saddlepoint techniques lead to highly accurate approximations for Bayesian predictive densities and cumulative distribution functions in stochastic model settings where the prior is tractable, but not necessarily the likelihood or the predictand distribution. They consider more specifically models involving predictions associated with waiting times for semi‐Markov processes whose distributions are indexed by an unknown parameter θ. Bayesian prediction for such processes when they are not stationary is also addressed and the inverse‐Gaussian based saddlepoint approximation of Wood, Booth & Butler (1993) is shown to accurately deal with the nonstationarity whereas the normal‐based Lugannani & Rice (1980) approximation cannot, Their methods are illustrated by predicting various waiting times associated with M/M/q and M/G/1 queues. They also discuss modifications to the matrix renewal theory needed for computing the moment generating functions that are used in the saddlepoint methods.     

On the functional form of corporate cooptation: Empirical findings linking the intensity of market constraint with the frequency of directorate ties

Using data on market transactions involving manufacturing industries in the 1967 American economy and data on directors of large firms involved in manufacturing at the time, the frequency of interorganizational ties through corporate directorates operating in economic sectors J and M is shown to increase with the extent to which average profits in industry J are constrained by its market transactions (sales and/or purchases) with sector M. Market constraint has its strongest and most direct effect on the spread of a corporation through ownership ties into multiple sectors rather than on the corporation's use of interlocking. However, the central point demonstrated concerns directorate tie frequency. Not only is the absence of directorate ties predicted by the absence of market constraint, the actual frequency of ties between economic sectors is predicted by the intensity of market constraint they constitute for one another's profits.