Strategic Alliance Research in the Era of Digital Transformation: Perspectives on Future Research

The emerging digital transformation in the twenty‐first century is rapidly and significantly changing the business landscape. The fast‐changing activities, expectations and new modes of collaboration suggest it is time to review the current theoretical insights from strategic alliance (SA) research, which are based on assumptions from a different era. We therefore aim to stimulate multidisciplinary debate and theoretical reflections to better understand emerging paradoxes and challenges that contemporary firms face in the formation, evolution and dissolution of strategic alliances. Specifically, we offer alternative visions of SA research and suggest fresh applications or supplements of existing theoretical perspectives and research methods that can better address the research questions emerging from an era of digital transformation.     

Sample sizes for estimation in clinical research

A sample size justification should be given for all clinical investigations. However, sometimes the objective of a trial is to estimate an effect with a view to planning a later definitive study. This paper describes the calculations for designing studies where one wishes to adopt an estimation approach through using confidence intervals around the overall response. Calculations are given for data anticipated to take a Normal form. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Welfare Policies Affect Adolescents' School Outcomes: A Synthesis of Evidence From Experimental Studies

Using data from 8 random assignment studies and employing meta‐analytic techniques, this article provides systematic evidence that welfare and work policies targeted at low‐income parents have small adverse effects on some school outcomes among adolescents ages 12 to 18 years at follow‐up. These adverse effects were observed mostly for school performance outcomes and occurred in programs that required mothers to work or participate in employment‐related activities and those that encouraged mothers to work voluntarily. The most pronounced negative effects on school outcomes occurred for the group of adolescents who had a younger sibling, possibly because of the increased home and sibling care responsibilities they assumed as their mothers increased their employment.     

Pen Dudley''s name finally disappears from the public relations marquee

When the public relations firm D-A-Y was dissolved into Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations November 1, 1988, the longest lived public relations agency disappeared into the sands of time that enveloped the first four agencies started in the first decade of the waning century. The D in D-A-Y stood for Pendleton Dudley, a venerable pioneer in this vocation, who had opened his agency in Wall Street in 1909 at the urging of his good friend, Ivy Lee. Dudley, a rugged, independent product of frontier America, headed his firm for fifty-seven years—a longevity record surpassed only by that of Edward L. Bernays, who started his firm in 1919 in the Post World War I public relations boom.Pendleton Dudley—known to his close friends as Pen and to his associates in his firm as PD, was born September 8, 1876, in a small frontier town of Troy, Missouri, when America was an agricultural nation. He came to pioneer as a counselor to the corporate giants, AT&T among them, in a complex, interdependent corporate industrial America. Pen Dudley did much to infuse this field with respectability in a time when it was viewed with suspicion or disdain in its early years. He was a strong advocate of research as the only sound basis for planning and executing programs to influence public behavior. He was also active in the Public Relations Society of America after it was formed in 1948 and was in the forefront of those creating the now extinct Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education. In 1965, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the New York PRSA Chapter. He died at the age of 90 in 1966.The author is Dean Emeritus of Journalism at the University of Georgia, and co-author Effective Public Relations, 6th Ed.     

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, JOB CONDITIONS, AND WELL-BEING: Self-Concept Explanations for Gender-Contingent Effects

Using data from a representative sample of adults age eighteen to fifty‐five who reside in Toronto, Canada, and are employed in the paid labor force, this study asks: Are the health benefits of education, income, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work different for women and men? If so, do mastery and self‐esteem contribute to those differences? Results show that women and men derive different personal benefits from socioeconomic status and job qualities: (1) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with the sense of mastery among women, (2) job autonomy is associated more positively with self‐esteem among women, (3) education, job autonomy, and nonroutinized work are associated more negatively with depressive symptoms among women, and (4) job autonomy and nonroutinized work are associated more positively with global health among women. Moreover, the patterns in (1) and (2) explain the gender‐contingent effects in (3) and (4). In addition, unexpected suppression effects reveal that, among men, education is associated negatively with mastery and self‐esteem—but only after adjustment for job conditions. I interpret the findings in the context of the disadvantaged status thesis and speculate about status‐related social comparison processes.     

Classifying At‐Risk High School Youth: The Influence of Exposure to Community Violence and Protective Factors on Academic and Health Outcomes

Using cluster analysis, 789 predominately Latino and African American high school youth were classified into varying academic at‐risk profiles using self‐reported levels of academic confidence, motivation to attend school, perceived family support, connections with teachers and peers, and exposure to violence. Six clusters emerged, 5 of which were identified as “at‐risk.” The clusters were examined in relation to academic stress, health status, grades, and school retention. Exposure to violence was one distinguishing feature of youth identified as most vulnerable, vulnerable, and resilient; however, youth identified as resilient recorded better academic outcomes.     

Awkward Customers? Parents and Provision for Special Educational Needs

This article selectively reports on a small-scale qualitative exploration of the experiences of families who had undergone recent conflict with special educational needs (SEN) professionals. The data were collected over the spring and summer terms of 2001 from 10 families in two local education authorities (LEAs) in the English midlands. The research aimed to examine the parents' perspectives on points of conflict or dissatisfaction between themselves and education professionals. It was concerned with the parents' points of view regarding their pursuit of desired outcomes for their children and the factors that helped or hindered their endeavours. The project found that the parents' negotiation of the SEN system was held by them to be exceptionally difficult and stressful compared to other troubling issues in their lives. The research suggests that dissatisfactions with SEN provision have important implications for the management of LEA Parent partnership Schemes (PPS) in ameliorating the differences between parental aspirations and governmental ambition.