Contents of Volume 70

Volume contents

Contents of Volume 70     

Relating the Central and the Local

Although a number of valuable models of central‐local relationships in the nonprofit sector have been developed, particularly in relation to federal structures, there has been a tendency to assume that in any given organizational relationship central‐local structures will follow one common pattern. We argue that wider strategies are available: central dependency along one dimension may run with greater local autonomy along another. Such mixed tight‐loose structures may be of considerable importance in the “boundaryless” organizational environment of the future.     

CREDIT-SCORING MODELS AND THE CUT-OFF POINT—A SIMPLIFICATION

The article presents a simple method for establishing the optimal cut-off point on a credit-scoring index under a variety of conditions. A procedure for choosing an index from several candidates is also proposed, and the use of credit information in such an index is discussed.     

The Assessment of Research Quality in UK Universities: Peer Review or Metrics?

This paper investigates the extent to which the outcomes of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK, determined by peer review, can be explained by a set of quantitative indicators. Three cognate units of assessment are examined in detail: business and management, economics and econometrics, and accounting and finance. The main finding is that each of the three components of research activity (namely, research output, esteem and research environment) is highly correlated with various quantitative indicators. A further finding is that the judgement of the Research Assessment Exercise panels was biased in favour of Russell Group universities. There is also evidence of bias by the economics and econometrics panel. The results support the use of quantitative indicators in the research assessment process, particularly a journal quality index. Requiring the panels to take bibliometric indicators into account should help not only to reduce the workload of panels but also to mitigate the problem of implicit bias.     

Hong Kong managers' perceptions of American business values

This report describes empirical research conducted to study the research question, “To what extent do foreign managers' own cultural values influence their perceptions of the corporate values of companies in other cultures?” Using the authors' “Business Values Questionnaire,” business managers from Hong Kong gave their perceptions of publicly stated corporate values of very large U.S. service companies. A similar United States sample was used as a comparison group. Results gave partial support to the authors' hypotheses that an individual's own cultural values influence perceived values of another culture.     

The Anglican clergy and the early development of British sociology

The theoretical bias evident in histories of sociological thought and practice has tended to minimise some other important influences on its development. One such is the relationship between ‘Christian Sociology’ as articulated by the writers of such Church of England organisations as the Christian Social Union and the Christendom Group. A reading of the early journal publications of early twentieth century British sociology suggests an inter-relationship between the input of the Anglican clergy and the emergence of a scientific, university-based discipline. With particular reference to the sociological intentions of the 1924 Conference on Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) and to the writings of the Christian Sociologist, Maurice B. Reckitt, this article suggests that the view that the relationship between Christian and academic sociology can be interpreted simply as a ‘phase’ in sociological history does less than justice to the complexities of a neglected aspect of the professionalisation of the discipline.     

ASYMPTOTIC LIKELIHOOD APPROXIMATIONS USING A PARTIAL LAPLACE APPROXIMATION

Elimination of a nuisance variable is often non‐trivial and may involve the evaluation of an intractable integral. One approach to evaluate these integrals is to use the Laplace approximation. This paper concentrates on a new approximation, called the partial Laplace approximation, that is useful when the integrand can be partitioned into two multiplicative disjoint functions. The technique is applied to the linear mixed model and shows that the approximate likelihood obtained can be partitioned to provide a conditional likelihood for the location parameters and a marginal likelihood for the scale parameters equivalent to restricted maximum likelihood (REML). Similarly, the partial Laplace approximation is applied to the t‐distribution to obtain an approximate REML for the scale parameter. A simulation study reveals that, in comparison to maximum likelihood, the scale parameter estimates of the t‐distribution obtained from the approximate REML show reduced bias.