Exploratory and exploitative innovation in family businesses: the moderating role of the family firm image and family involvement in top management

Review of Managerial Science - Drawing on innovation and family business literature, this study examines the largely overlooked family effect in exploratory and exploitative...     

Examining coping strategies used by Spanish female social work students: evidence for the importance of social problem-solving abilities

The present study examined the role of social problem-solving abilities in the coping strategies used by 310 female social work students from Spain. Results from comparative analyses of the coping strategies, used by students to deal with stressful situations, indicated the greater use of functional forms of coping (eg problem solving and cognitive restructuring), compared to dysfunctional forms of coping (eg problem avoidance and wishful thinking). Moreover, results from regression analyses indicated that constructive social problem-solving abilities, namely, positive problem orientation and rational problem solving, predicted the use of functional coping strategies (eg problem solving, cognitive restructuring, and express emotions). Alternatively, one damaging social problem-solving ability, namely, negative problem orientation, predicted the use of dysfunctional coping strategies (eg problem avoidance, wishful thinking, self criticism, and social withdrawal). Taken together, these findings provide an important first step for understanding what and how social problem-solving abilities might inform how social work students cope with stressful situations as they arise. Some implications for social work education and training are discussed.     

Career Planning in Spain: Do Fixed-term Contracts Delay Marriage and Parenthood?

The aim of this paper is to find an empirical connection between the striking increase in the use of fixed-term contracts in Spain and the observed delay in the age at marriage and maternity. Using the eight waves of individual information from the European Household Panel for Spain, we find that for men, the decision whether to get married is strongly negatively affected by holding unstable contracts or not working, relative to when an indefinite contract is held. However, for women, results suggest that holding fixed-term contracts is not a deterrent for the decision whether to get married. With respect to the decision of whether to enter into parenthood, results indicate that for all childless women, either with no partner, holding fixed-term contracts delays entry into motherhood relative to the holding of indefinite contracts. The discouragement effect is stronger for women with no partner, though.JEL classification: D1, J1     

Convergence in the Innovative Performance of the European Union Countries

The aim of this work is to study whether a process of convergence in innovation in the European countries has occurred or not, by analysing the relative changes in the innovative position of the European countries during the period 2002–2006. Special attention is paid to the relative changes that have occurred in the recently acceded countries and to the poorest countries of the EU-15. The data used in this research come from the fourth and fifth wave of the Community Innovation Survey elaborated by EUROSTAT and collected in different Member States of the European Union. The statistical technique used is the multiple factorial analysis. The study has been carried out on two different sets of firms. On the one hand, it has considered all manufacturing firms (innovative and non-innovative firms) and, on the other, only the innovative manufacturing firms. The results show a moderate convergence process in innovation in the manufacturing as a whole, but not in the innovative firms.     

Therapeutic residential care in Spain. Population treated and therapeutic coverage

Therapeutic residential care (TRC) is the name given to specialized children's homes for treating cases with severe emotional and behavioural problems that have been placed in residential care. A recent international review has revealed great diversity in the referral criteria of cases and in the models of intervention carried out. The goal of this study is to describe the population treated in these types of facilities in Spain and the therapeutic coverage given. The sample is made up of 215 young people in children's homes, of whom 93 are in TRC. The cases referred to TRC have been in residential care for less time but have gone through a greater number of placements. These young people also exhibit more problems of drug use, and there is a larger percentage of clinical‐range cases in the Child Behaviour Checklist scales of attention problems and aggressive behaviour. Nevertheless, the results of logistic regression indicate that the only variables that significantly increase the probability of being referred to TRC are drug use and changes of care placements. With regard to therapeutic care, there is a higher percentage in the TRC group receiving psychiatric care, and the sessions are also more frequent.     

Adult self-sufficiency and social adjustment in care leavers from children's homes: a long-term assessment

This paper presents a study carried out in Spain that followed up 260 young people, the majority of them adults, who had been in residential care for significant periods. The follow‐up takes place between 1 and 9 years after participants had left residential care, and assesses their level of social and work integration, as well as considering the incidence of problems related to marginalization and social exclusion. Furthermore, it analyses the reasons for the child being taken into care, the socio‐family context, length of stay, changes in placement and other features or incidents in relation to the residential care. The data show that close to 15% have serious problems (drug dependence, delinquency, etc.), 25% receive help from the social services and the rest manage independently to a greater or lesser extent. We discuss the significance of these data, especially the relationship between the final result and the initial and process variables.     

Risk Perception Among Smokers: A Qualitative Study

The aim of this qualitative study is to identify the dimensions people used to assess the risk of smoking and then compare them with those used by health professionals in primary healthcare. Five discussion groups were conducted. The field work was carried out in Barcelona (Spain), from February 2005 to January 2006. Data were analyzed following a semantic‐thematic categorical content analysis (ACC‐ts). Results showed that people tend to employ stereotypical discourses when evaluating the risk of smoking. Similarly, they reassess the risk in the context of their life experience and incorporate new nuances to the arguments sustaining their behavior. Once this reassessment takes place, the decision to continue smoking emerges, and smokers come up with additional arguments justifying their habit (i.e., age, benefits related to costs). Professionals are aware of this process and its multidimensional nature. Nevertheless, their discourse loses this multidimensional feature when discussing the strategies they use at smoking cessation interventions. This qualitative study increases the understanding of various meanings that people attribute to their life experience. These assumptions may be useful for developing health practices that are closer to people. As a practical utility of these results, it would be interesting to apply a preliminary assessment of the different meanings that people attribute to smoking from their life context in risk communication.     

Characterizing multidimensional inequality measures which fulfil the Pigou–Dalton bundle principle

The Pigou–Dalton bundle dominance introduced by Fleurbaey and Trannoy (Social Choice and Welfare, 2003) captures the basic idea of the Pigou–Dalton transfer principle, demanding that, in the multidimensional context also, “a transfer from a richer person to a poorer one decreases inequality”. However, up to now, this principle has not been incorporated to derive multidimensional inequality measures. The aim of this article is to characterize measures which fulfil this property, and to identify sub-families of indices from a normative approach. The families we derive share their functional forms with others having already been obtained in the literature, the major difference being the restrictions upon the parameters.