Public sector managers: the decision to leave or remain in a job

The public sector faces a grave problem as far as managerial retention as the result of the increasing number of retirements and of voluntary resignations. Despite the vital interest in managerial turnover in the public sector, research is scarce. This study, which increases our understanding of why public sector managers leave their positions, takes a qualitative and narrative research approach in examining voluntary turnover. Interviews were conducted with operations managers (in education, social care, and technical activities) at three Swedish municipalities. We identify a multitude of environment push and pull factors with a focus on administrative support, supervisory support and illegitimate tasks. The narratives of managerial turnover reveal the complexity of the decision to leave or remain in a job, containing a mixture of push and pull factors, negative feelings, unmet expectations and extraordinary events. Three possible HRD actions to decrease undesirable managerial turnover are identified: re-work organizational structures; re-model job characteristics; and re-examine managerial turnover decisions as a long and complex process. Our hope is that the findings are used for ultimately create healthy organizations.     

Quantal Risk Assessment Database: A Database for Exploring Patterns in Quantal Dose‐Response Data in Risk Assessment and its Application to Develop Priors for Bayesian Dose‐Response Analysis

Quantitative risk assessments for physical, chemical, biological, occupational, or environmental agents rely on scientific studies to support their conclusions. These studies often include relatively few observations, and, as a result, models used to characterize the risk may include large amounts of uncertainty. The motivation, development, and assessment of new methods for risk assessment is facilitated by the availability of a set of experimental studies that span a range of dose‐response patterns that are observed in practice. We describe construction of such a historical database focusing on quantal data in chemical risk assessment, and we employ this database to develop priors in Bayesian analyses. The database is assembled from a variety of existing toxicological data sources and contains 733 separate quantal dose‐response data sets. As an illustration of the database's use, prior distributions for individual model parameters in Bayesian dose‐response analysis are constructed. Results indicate that including prior information based on curated historical data in quantitative risk assessments may help stabilize eventual point estimates, producing dose‐response functions that are more stable and precisely estimated. These in turn produce potency estimates that share the same benefit. We are confident that quantitative risk analysts will find many other applications and issues to explore using this database.     

上海股票市场的投资组合分析:基于均值—绝对偏差的折中方法

针对中国股票市场的大规模投资组合分析在文献中尚很少予以讨论 .本文基于均值—绝对偏差的折中方法探讨了上海股票市场 1 69种股票的投资组合分析 ,得到了一些有益的启示和结论 .这些结论将有助于市场投资者和监管者深化对上海股票市场投资的理解 .本文所使用的投资分析软件 Quanz Portfolio具有大规模投资组合的数据处理能力 ,将是投资者 (尤其基金公司 )的市场投资组合分析的有用工具     

It's Complicated: The 2014–2015 U.S. Measles Outbreak and Parents’ Vaccination Beliefs,Confidence, and Intentions

While it seems intuitive that highly visible vaccine‐preventable disease outbreaks should impact perceptions of disease risk and facilitate vaccination, few empirical studies exist to confirm or dispel these beliefs. This study investigates the impact of the 2014–2015 Disneyland measles outbreak on parents’ vaccination attitudes and future vaccination intentions. The analysis relies on a pair of public opinion surveys of American parents with at least one child under the age of six (N = 1,000 across each survey). Controlling for basic demographics, we found higher levels of reported confidence in the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccinations in our follow‐up data collection. However, this confidence was also accompanied by elevated levels of concern toward childhood vaccines among American parents. We then examined how different subgroups in the population scored on these measures before and after the outbreak. We found that parents with high levels of interest in the topic of vaccines and a child who is not fully upto date with the recommended vaccination schedule reported more supportive attitudes toward vaccines. However, future intentions to follow the recommended vaccination schedule were not positively impacted by the outbreak. Possible explanations for these results and implications for vaccination outreach are discussed.     

Culture and Crisis Communication: Nestle India's Maggi Noodles Case

Extant theoretical paradigms in the field of crisis communication are organization-centric and do not adequately recognize the role of culture. The purpose of this essay is to analyze a crisis faced by Nestle India using the framework of global public relations which defines culture broadly to include political, economic, media, societal, and activist cultures. Our analysis revealed that a multinational corporation with over a century of presence in the country struggled to align itself to the complexities of the cultures of the host country. In the case of Nestle India, whereas environmental variables such as political economy and Westernization of urban India boosted the growth of its instant noodles, the multinational also struggled to cope with the rise of media corporatization, activist pressure and the vagaries of regulatory enforcement not to speak of cultural nationalism. It is evident that Nestlé's crisis response was governed more by its traditional corporate culture than by an ability to keep pace with the changing demands of its environment, leading to the amplification of an issue into a crisis. The study concludes that multinationals that ignore culture will be forced to pay a heavy price both in terms of reputation and the bottom line.     

Use of Redundant Industrial Buildings as Injections into the Cultural Sector in Norway

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.     

The need for knowledge modification in technology change: a framework to consider changes in domain complexity,knowledge and productivity

This paper researches productivity in relation to domain complexity and the present knowledge capacity in an organisational context. The study is based on five very different case studies. Three studies are conducted in Denmark, Germany, Mexico and China and are related to knowledge transfer in the relocation of manufacturing facilities. Two studies investigate operation and automation of oil and gas production in the North Sea. The case study method involves semi-structured interviews, surveys, an analysis of historical production data and observations. Based on the findings from the field studies, the paper develops a conceptual framework that management can use for discussions of productivity, development of knowledge and design of learning programmes when considering changes in the complexity of a domain or a change in knowledge.     

中国软件企业过程改进的“制度化”:以东软集团实施CMMI为例

通过对东软集团股份有限公司实施CMMI的实地调查和案例研究,探讨该公司实施CMMI提高软件过程能力的背景和绩效,揭示中国软件企业过程改进的"制度化"体系。研究结果表明,该公司引进CMMI模式改进软件过程,使软件生产已经成为"制度化的过程"以及一个习惯性遵循和使用规则的过程。CMMI为中国软件企业走向规范化、规模化、成熟化起到了重大的促进和导向作用。     

基于创新导向的风险投资领域公共政策

风险投资对促进创新活动具有重要作用,然而风险投资的健康发展需要政府公共政策的干预。为此从公共政策、风险投资与创新三者之间的关系入手,从创新的需求和供给角度建立模型,分别研究了创新产品市场和风险投资市场,并运用均衡分析方法研究了整个市场的均衡状态,根据社会效用最大化目标,分析政府最优公共政策组合及其对社会福利的影响。因此,这种最优政策工具组合可供政府制定相关政策时参考。     

乡村振兴战略下涉藏农村地区体育公共服务精准突破路径研究

通过文献资料法、专家访谈法等研究方法,围绕乡村振兴实施战略,以“二十字”总要求为切入点,阐述乡村振兴中农 村体育公共服务的重要性,根据涉藏农村地区的地域特殊性和复杂性,分析提升体育公共服务的困境,找准问题,精准施策。 由此得出:深入挖掘整理藏民族体育文化,打造文体旅融合经济链,实现产业兴旺;绿色低碳,打造生态宜居乡镇;推崇价值引 导,提升文明乡风民风;找准突破点,调整平衡度,做到治理有效;转变价值取向,实现生活富裕等提升体育公共服务的精准突 破路径。 通过涉藏农村地区体育公共服务治理现代化,作为乡村振兴的突破口之一,找准资源利用,提高服务标准,扩大内 需,逐步满足农民日益增长的体育需求,最终实现乡村振兴的体育公共服务振兴战略目标。