Modeling Network Management: An Examination of Internal and External Strategies

Within the last decade scholars have begun to emphasize the importance of exploring management within an inter-organizational context (O’Toole and Laurence Public Administration Review 57(1):45-52, 1997; Agranoff and McGuire 1999; O’Toole and Meier Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 9(4): 505-526, 1999). These studies have demonstrated the importance of network management on organizational performance. However, McGuire (2002) argues that the literature on networking does not demonstrate the intricate activities of network management that lead to increased performance, asserting case studies are necessary to achieve this goal. This work uses large-n data and presents the concepts of internal and external networking as a framework for understanding how network management contributes to improved organizational performance.     

Approximation algorithms for the graph orientation minimizing the maximum weighted outdegree

Given a simple, undirected graph G=(V,E) and a weight function w:E→ℤ⁺, we consider the problem of orienting all edges in E so that the maximum weighted outdegree among all vertices is minimized. It has previously been shown that the unweighted version of the problem is solvable in polynomial time while the weighted version is (weakly) NP-hard. In this paper, we strengthen these results as follows: (1) We prove that the weighted version is strongly NP-hard even if all edge weights belong to the set {1,k}, where k is any fixed integer greater than or equal to 2, and that there exists no pseudo-polynomial time approximation algorithm for this problem whose approximation ratio is smaller than (1+1/k) unless P = NP; (2) we present a new polynomial-time algorithm that approximates the general version of the problem within a ratio of (2−1/k), where k is the maximum weight of an edge in G; (3) we show how to approximate the special case in which all edge weights belong to {1,k} within a ratio of 3/2 for k=2 (note that this matches the inapproximability bound above), and (2−2/(k+1)) for any k≥3, respectively, in polynomial time.     

Tendencies of the Development of Public Service in Lithuania

The article analyzes the development of the Lithuanian civil service and the influence of some of the prevailing models of public management on the changes that occurred in the service. It also reviews the attitude of society and experts towards the bureaucracy and points out that in Lithuania, society is becoming more and more skeptical about politics and the whole public environment. It emphasizes that it is not easy to implement the managerial approach in the Civil Service in post-Communist states.     

The Total Marital Fertility Rate and Its Extensions

What we will call the age-based TMFR is computed conventionally by adding up age-specific marital fertility rates in the hope of estimating the number of children ever born to a woman who is married throughout her childbearing years. Demographers have long been strongly skeptical about this quantity because it normally indicates implausibly many children. Our analysis of data from the Romanian GGS confirms this finding, and we propose an alternative duration-based TMFR computed in the spirit of parity-progression ratios. At the same time, we extend the method to cover any type of living arrangement (cohabitation, marriage, non-partnered arrangement, and so on). Because each resulting total union-type fertility rate (TUFR) explicitly accounts for the living arrangement, it improves on the conventional total fertility rate (TFR), which does not. We embed the investigation in an event-history analysis with fixed and time-varying control covariates and find patterns of relative risks for such variables that reveal interesting features of childbearing behavior in the Romanian data, which we use to illustrate the method. In most cases, these patterns are quite robust against model re-specification, including the shift from the age-based to the duration-based approach. Since, the number of female respondents is ??only?? about 6,000 (minus records that cannot be used for the current purpose) in a normal single-round GGS, there is considerable inherent random variation in the data set, but we show that simple few-term moving average graduation suffices to overcome this problem.     

Ein empirischer Validit?tsvergleich zwischen Adaptive Self-Explicated Approach (ASE), Pairwise Comparison-based Preference Measurement (PCPM) und Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA)

The increasing complexity of many products makes high demands on methods used for measuring consumer preferences. In such cases, practitioners frequently use Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA). However, compositional approaches also proved to be efficient. Recently, Srinivasan and Netzer (2011) suggested a promising compositional technique called the Adaptive Self-Explicated Approach (ASE), which significantly outperformed ACA regarding its predictive validity. Another advantageous approach, called Pairwise Comparison-based Preference Measurement (PCPM), was introduced by Scholz et al. (2010). This paper contrasts the popular ACA with these two new compositional approaches and discusses the validity results of an empirical study in the leisure industry. For two out of three criteria PCPM partly leads to a significantly higher predictive validity and a halving of the survey time. As products and services become more complex, multi-attribute preference meas urement techniques have to cope with a large number of attributes. Particularly Adaptive Conjoint Analysis (ACA) and compositional approaches are often applied to complex products. Two new alternative compositional approaches have been recently proposed, the Adaptive Self-Explicated Approach (ASE, Srinivasan und Netzer 2011) as well as Pairwise Comparison-based Preference Measurement (PCPM, Scholz et al. 2010). In first empirical applications, the authors found that the predictive validity of ASE and PCPM was significantly higher than that of ACA. In an empirical study involving theme parks, we compare ASE and PCPM as well as the benchmark ACA with respect to several criteria of validity. We find that the predictive validity is significantly higher for the PCPM with respect to two (out of three) criteria. Moreover, the PCPM survey was about half the length of the ACA survey.     

Can Marriage Reduce Risky Health Behavior for African-Americans?

This paper estimates whether marriage can improve health outcomes for African-Americans through changes in risky health behaviors like smoking, drinking, and drug use. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health and propensity score matching methodology to account for the potential selection bias, the results show that marriage does lead to a reduction in risky health behaviors, specifically drinking and drug use. This question has important policy implications because if marriage has the same benefits for African-Americans as it does for the general population, social welfare programs can be re-evaluated to incorporate marriage promotion, and further support can be given to programs that decrease adverse health behaviors.     

Translating family-focused prevention science into public health impact

Underage drinking is a pervasive problem in the United States, with serious consequences for youth, families, communities, and society as a whole. Family-focused preventive interventions for children and adolescents have shown potential for reducing underage drinking and other problem behaviors. Research findings indicate that clear advances have been made, in terms of both the number of evidence-based interventions available, and in the quality of the methods used to evaluate them. To fully reap the benefits of such preventive interventions and achieve public health impact, the findings of family-focused preventive intervention science must be translated into real-world, community practices. This type of translation can be enhanced through four sets of translational impact factors-effectiveness of interventions, extensiveness of their population coverage, efficiency of interventions, and engagement of eligible populations, with sustained quality intervention implementation. Findings from studies conducted by researchers at the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute and other empirical work highlight the importance of these factors. A model for community- university partnerships has been developed that potentially can facilitate the dissemination and public health impact of universal interventions to prevent underage drinking and other problem behaviors. This model fits well within a comprehensive strategic framework for promoting effective prevention.     

Fighting in the legal grey area: an analysis of the German Federal Court of Justice decision in case preimplantation genetic diagnosis

According to the German Embryo Protection Act, PGD has been banned in Germany since 1990; one reason is the legislature’s avoiding to insert a revision clause regarding medical advance into the law. The ruling of the German Federal Court of Justice of July 2010 shows the problems resulting out of this approach and declares PGD to be permitted in certain cases. The article discusses the necessity for, as well as the problems of, an interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of reproductive medicine.     

Verbindliche und unverbindliche Grundschulempfehlungen und soziale Ungleichheiten am ersten Bildungs��bergang

While the influence of numerous individual and family characteristics on social disparities in educational achievement is examined in several studies, the relevance of institutional conditions on the attainment of different social groups is comparatively unclear. The present study adds to this debate and analyses the effect of mandatory and non-mandatory teacher recommendations on social disparities in educational participation after primary school. This is done by using unique data from North Rhine-Westphalia, where the degree of obligation of the teacher recommendation varied in terms of a natural experiment. Two transition cohorts are considered, one before and one after the change of a non-mandatory to a mandatory setting of the teacher recommendation in 2006. The results reveal that a mandatory teacher recommendation reduces the influence of social origin on the transition from primary to secondary school. This effect is especially apparent when families choose between the medium and the highest track in the German educational system, the Realschule and the Gymnasium.