Determinants and Consequences of Social Trust*

This article provides an overview of social trust, examining its various aspects and components. Trust is best understood in a sociological sense by focusing on its important relational characteristic. Following this lead, the article discusses briefly how social trust relates to social capital and examines factors that shape the development of social trust, along with outcomes related to variations in trust, classifying them by analytical level (i.e., individual, community, group, organizational, and societal). The article concludes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of existing research and by identifying some important questions that have not yet been adequately addressed.     

Women's legal knowledge: a case study of Mexican urban dwellers

In Mexico, the nongovernmental organization Sevisio, Desarrollo y Paz, A.C. (SEDEPAC) is helping poor women acquire legal knowledge in an economic climate characterized by the increased feminization of poverty brought about by the Structural Adjustment Program. The Mexican legal system is grounded in a patriarchal tradition, and the codified laws continue to favor men. Women were not granted full citizenship until 1953, and discrimination against women was not addressed in Mexican law until 1974 as the country prepared to host the First UN International Women's Conference. However, legal advances are not being applied in the family or in larger society where men remain in power. Mexico also distinguishes between private law and public law. Because domestic violence falls in the realm of private law, authorities are loathe to follow-up on women's complaints in this area. Since its founding in 1983, SEDEPAC has applied a gender perspective to its activities and programs. SEDEPAC held its first women's legal workshop in 1987 and realized that most poor women have no knowledge of existing laws or their rights, that alternative legal services for women are scarce, that existing laws must be changed, and that the authoritarian and conservative legal system helps maintain cultural stereotypes. Since then, SEDEPAC has held annual workshops, follow-up meetings, and training sessions and has provided counseling. The main topics addressed are women's social conditions; violence and the penal code; civil rights, power, and dependency; women's bodies and reproductive rights; and women's organization and leadership. The workshops use techniques of popular education such as group participation and use of gossip as a communication tool. The workshops have changed participants' lives and led to the formation of an independent Popular Defenders' Coordination.     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.     

Measuring operational excellence: an operational excellence profitability (OEP) approach

The pursuit of operational excellence in the manufacturing industry is at rise but its measurement still lacks of appropriate indicators to determine its financial benefits. The ambiguity is due to the impact arisen from manufacturing fluctuations such as price and cost, production mix and direct and indirect parameters variations. Manufacturing fluctuations distort the cost benefit of operational excellence. This paper, therefore, proposes the OEP (Operational Excellence Profitability) indicators to isolate the impact of manufacturing fluctuation and distinctly identify the payback of operational excellence strategies and initiatives through cost benefits of achieving higher efficiency and yield. The paper presents the conceptual and mathematical development of the proposed OEP indicators and the formulas used for their calculation. Hypothetical and industrial-based investigations and applications of the OEP indicators are conducted for their validation. The results obtained from the hypothetical exercise and industrial case suggest that OEP indicators can provide an effective cost-benefit analysis of operational excellence. This would contribute in providing manufacturing organizations with more complete information regarding the performance of their processes, which will allow their directors and managers to take better decisions related to the management and improvement of their processes.     

Resistance to metropolitan institutionality and planning in Chile

In this article, the authors review and analyse two key processes conducted by the Chilean state over the past 50 years. The first process consists of the development of specific planning instruments for the particular realities of metropolitan areas. The second process consists of the successive legislative attempts to work towards a definition of a new form of institutionality for cities with metropolitan profiles. These attempts have either failed or solely become bills of law. Both processes suggest a political and technical resistance throughout history, to substantially modify institutionality, as well as planning instruments, in order to make them more appropriate and consistent with the needs of growing metropolitan areas in Chile.     

Introduction

Public Organization Review -     

A non-parametric statistic for testing conditional heteroscedasticity for unobserved component models

When prediction intervals are constructed using unobserved component models (UCM), problems can arise due to the possible existence of components that may or may not be conditionally heteroscedastic. Accurate coverage depends on correctly identifying the source of the heteroscedasticity. Different proposals for testing heteroscedasticity have been applied to UCM; however, in most cases, these procedures are unable to identify the heteroscedastic component correctly. The main issue is that test statistics are affected by the presence of serial correlation, causing the distribution of the statistic under conditional homoscedasticity to remain unknown. We propose a nonparametric statistic for testing heteroscedasticity based on the well-known Wilcoxon''s rank statistic. We study the asymptotic validation of the statistic and examine bootstrap procedures for approximating its finite sample distribution. Simulation results show an improvement in the size of the homoscedasticity tests and a power that is clearly comparable with the best alternative in the literature. We also apply the test on real inflation data. Looking for the presence of a conditionally heteroscedastic effect on the error terms, we arrive at conclusions that almost all cases are different than those given by the alternative test statistics presented in the literature.     

“Migrant Capital” and Domestic Work: Labour Trajectories of Immigrant Women in Spain

This article analyses the labour trajectory of migrant women in domestic service. The research considers women's working conditions upon arrival, or their “migrant capital” (i.e. their human, social and economic capital) as the defining factors in their labour trajectories. The study, conducted on a sample of migrant women in domestic service, reveals the different value each type of capital has at each stage of a labour trajectory. The social network is the core capital in their first job. Nevertheless, the key factors in labour mobility are human capital and a household's financial needs. The processes of administrative regularization and family reunification prompt far‐reaching changes in these women's labour trajectories. Finally, labour trajectories during the economic crisis have been shaped by financial needs, leading to a decapitalization of the human capital acquired, with even legal status surrendering its value.     

Emerging Genetic and Epigenetic Mechanisms Underlying Pubertal Maturation in Adolescence

The adolescent transition begins with the onset of puberty which, upstream in the brain, is initiated by the gonadotropin‐releasing hormone (GnRH) pulse generator that activates the release of peripheral sex hormones. Substantial research in human and animal models has revealed a myriad of cellular networks and heritable genes that control the GnRH pulse generator allowing the individual to begin the process of reproductive competence and sexual maturation. Here, we review the latest knowledge in neuroendocrine pubertal research with emphasis on genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying the pubertal transition.