Initiative in work teams: adaptation and validation of the Personal Initiative at Group Level Scale / Iniciativa en los equipos de trabajo: adaptación y validación de la Escala de Iniciativa Personal a nivel Grupal

In this study, we conceptualize personal initiative as a collective construct and adapt and validate a scale to evaluate it with a sample of 308 Spanish participants belonging to 91 work teams. Personal initiative at group level is a behavioural syndrome in which the team shows an approach to work that is self-initiated, proactive, persistent, capable of modifying the atmosphere and pro organization. As a predictive variable, we analysed the climate for initiative as well as personal initiative at group level. The resulting variables that were analysed referred to organization and team performance, with the team productivity and innovation as the criteria, analysing radical innovation. The scale has suitable psychometric properties. The results show that there is a relationship between the two predictive variables. Furthermore, personal initiative at group level is related to team productivity, while the climate for initiative is related to innovation.     

CONCEPTUALIZING CONTEMPORARY HEALTH LIFESTYLES:

The intent of this article is to move beyond the work of Weber and construct a concept of health lifestyles applicable to the current phase of modernity. Beginning with the early twentieth-century work of Simmel and Weber on lifestyles generally, we move to mid-century to examine Bourdieu's perspective and turn to Giddens for an analysis of late century conditions. We find that Weber's insight concerning the dialectical interplay of choice and chance remains the central feature of the lifestyle concept. We also suggest that in rapidly changing late or postmodern situations, lifestyles not only provide self-identity but also promote a sense of stability and belonging for an individual by providing an anchor in a particular social constellation of style and activity. Our discussion leads us to define health lifestyles as collective patterns of health-related behavior based on choices from options available to people according to their life chances. Consistent with Bourdieu's notion of habitus, we assign priority to chance (structure) over choice.     

符号正义与公共行政 ——基于语言游戏的正义视角

公共行政是正义研究的重要领域。传统理论多采用罗尔斯、诺齐克和沃尔泽等人为正义提供的客观标准。但这些标准不仅在理论上相互冲突,而且在公共行政的实践中也常常会导致模棱两可的判断。本研究旨在提出一种符号正义的观念,来指导当代公共行政的理论与实践。这种观念认为正义并不存在中立客观的标准,而是被群体共享的信念和实践所建构。研究者只有将正义置于特定语言游戏的背景中,才能真正理解其发生和运作。因为和正义相关的不同语言游戏之间只存在家族相似性,所以公共行政必须面对相互冲突的复杂环境。符号正义的观念能够为这种公共行政问题的复杂性提供必不可少的分析框架。     

The Labor Supply of Female Heads of Household: Comparisons With Male Heads and Wives*

This paper compares a model of labor supply for female heads of household, male heads, and wives. Not only have female-headed households increased significantly as a proportion of all households in recent years, but these households are also more likely to be in poverty than are other households. Yet, the determinants of labor supply for this increasingly important demographic group still are largely unknown. Analyses are performed on a sample of employed female and male heads and wives from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. We examine the effects of wages, unearned income, number of children, and several other variables on hours worked per year, allowing for race interactions. We find that female heads and wives are similar in the effects of wages on their labor supply, while female and male heads are similar in the positive effect of children. We conclude that although financial need, as evidenced by low wages and children, increases female heads’labor supply, employment in more advantaged, non-female dominated jobs and core industries is needed to promote their full participation in the labor force.     

LIFESTYLE OR LEBENSFUHRUNG?

Max Weber's concept of Lebensführung was inappropriately translated as "lifestyle" in the two major English-language translations of his work. The result is that Weber's distinctly different terms " Lebensführung " (life conduct) and " Lebensstil " (lifestyles) have the imprecise and singular meaning " lifestyle " in Anglo-American literature. Translated literally, Lebensführun means life conduct and refers to choice and selfdirection in a person's behavior, not lifestyles. Consequently, Lebensführung is the element of choice within Weber's overall concept of Lebensstil (lifestyles) and joins with Lebenschancen (life chances) as one of Lebensstil's two basic components. To use Lebensführung to mean simply lifestyles overlooks the depth of Weber's thinking on the subject.     

Optimal Inattention to the Stock Market With Information Costs and Transactions Costs

Information costs, which comprise costs of gathering and processing information about stock values and costs of deciding how to respond to this information, induce a consumer to remain inattentive to the stock market for finite intervals of time. Whether, and how much, a consumer transfers assets between accounts depends on the costs of undertaking such transactions. In general, optimal behavior by a consumer facing both information costs and transactions costs is state‐dependent, with the timing of observations and the timing and size of transactions depending on the state. Surprisingly, if the fixed component of the transactions cost is sufficiently small, then eventually, with probability 1, a time‐dependent rule emerges: the interval between observations is constant and on each observation date, the consumer converts enough assets to liquid assets to finance consumption until the next observation. If the fixed component of transactions costs is large, the optimal rule remains state‐dependent indefinitely.     

Bayesian factor models in characterizing molecular adaptation

Assessing the selective influence of amino acid properties is important in understanding evolution at the molecular level. A collection of methods and models has been developed in recent years to determine if amino acid sites in a given DNA sequence alignment display substitutions that are altering or conserving a prespecified set of amino acid properties. Residues showing an elevated number of substitutions that favorably alter a physicochemical property are considered targets of positive natural selection. Such approaches usually perform independent analyses for each amino acid property under consideration, without taking into account the fact that some of the properties may be highly correlated. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical regression model with latent factor structure that allows us to determine which sites display substitutions that conserve or radically change a set of amino acid properties, while accounting for the correlation structure that may be present across such properties. We illustrate our approach by analyzing simulated data sets and an alignment of lysin sperm DNA.     

Forecasting environmental migration to the United Kingdom: an exploration using Bayesian models

Over the next 50 years, the potential impact of environmental change on human livelihoods could be considerable, with one possible consequence being increased levels of human mobility. This paper explores how uncertainty about the level of immigration to the United Kingdom as a consequence of environmental factors elsewhere may be forecast using a methodology involving Bayesian models. The conceptual understanding of forecasting is advanced in three ways. First, the analysis is believed to be the first time that the Bayesian modelling approach has been attempted in relation to environmental mobility. Second, the paper considers the expediency of this approach by comparing the responses to a Delphi survey with conventional expectations about environmental mobility in the research literature. Finally, the values and assumptions of the expert evidence provided in the Delphi survey are interrogated to illustrate the limited set of conditions under which forecasts of environmental mobility, as set out in this paper, are likely to hold.