The effects of regulatory tools on organizational populations

One of the main activities of regulation is the control of market development by influencing the number of firms in an industry, their entry into an industry, and their exit from an industry. Population ecology is used as a framework for explaining both the direct and indirect effects of regulatory activity on entry, exit, and market structure. This framework is then used to derive specific propositions about regulatory effects on entry, exit, and market structure in the health maintenance organization industry.     

Managing Logistics in Regional Banknote Supply Chain Under Security Concerns

We study the logistics problem faced by Regional Branches (RBs) of a central bank in managing the currency supply under security concerns. While making banknote supply decisions to Sub‐Branches (SBs), the management of RB must achieve two goals simultaneously: (i) guarantee that each SB has sufficient inventories of all denominations of banknotes to satisfy the demands from all commercial banks within its service area, and (ii) control the annual spending on this banknote supply operation. Due to security concerns, the following methods are implemented in the process of transporting banknotes: (i) the capacity of a cash truck is limited by the total face value (instead of the physical space) of banknotes, and (ii) empty decoy trucks are deployed along with the trucks filled with banknotes. After deriving a polynomial‐time strategy to guarantee an optimal solution for the special Bin‐Packing Problem faced in this study, we provide an exact formulation for the RB's supply planning problem. We also propose several polynomial‐time algorithms for deriving either optimal or near‐optimal solutions for the problem under different settings. Using the weekly demand data obtained from the central bank, we verify the performance of our algorithms, and analyze the impacts of changes in these features and in the fleet capacity on the total cost incurred by an RB under various scenarios.     

Use of Experiential Learning,Reflective Writing,and Metacognition to Develop Cultural Humility Among Undergraduate Students

This study discusses the use of experiential learning, reflective writing, and metacognition to develop cultural humility among undergraduate students enrolled in a social and economic justice course. Students participated in an activity that challenged them to learn about people who may have different social identities and experiences from their own such as attending a service in a religion different from their own. Then students wrote a reflective essay in which they used the margin of the paper as a safe space to write anything that came to mind during the writing process. A thematic analysis of students’ comments suggests that students used the space to examine their emotions, seek understanding of self and others, and recognize their privilege.     

Developmental Patterns in Marital Satisfaction: Another Look at Covenant Marriage

This study investigated differences in the trajectory of marital satisfaction in the first 7 years between couples in covenant versus standard marriages. The authors analyzed data on 707 Louisiana marriages from the Marriage Matters Panel Survey of Newlywed Couples, 1998–2004, using multivariate longitudinal growth modeling. When the sample was restricted to couples who remained married over the duration of the study, a marginal benefit of covenant status was found for husbands. This effect was largely accounted for by covenant husbands' more extensive exposure to premarital counseling. The linear decline in marital satisfaction over time that obtained for both husbands and wives was not, however, any different for covenant marriages versus standard marriages. Couples characterized by more traditional attitudes toward gender roles were significantly less satisfied than others. High premarital risk factors, initial uncertainty about marrying the spouse, and the presence of preschool‐age children in the household were all corrosive of marital satisfaction at any given time.     

Competing Priorities: Partner-Specific Relationship Characteristics and Motives for Condom Use Among At-Risk Young Adults

Condoms protect against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy and are essential to sexual health efforts targeting young adults, who are disproportionately affected by both outcomes. Understanding condom use motives is critical to increasing condom use. Research in this area is limited, particularly regarding the roles of partners and relationship factors. Using a longitudinal sample of 441 young adults and 684 reported partnerships we examined associations between relationship factors and condom use motives (pregnancy prevention, disease prevention, or dual protection). Simultaneous multilevel models identified variables associated with motives; level-specific models identified the levels (individual, partnership, time) variables impacted motives. Participants reported choosing condoms for pregnancy prevention, disease prevention, and dual protection in 51%, 17%, and 33% of partnerships, respectively. Partner-specific factors varied, to a differing degree, across the three levels. Seven variables (duration, condom self-efficacy, commitment, sexual decision-making, power, and vulnerability to harm [HIV/STIs] and pregnancy) distinguished condom use motives. The level of this association varied but was most pronounced at the partner and individual levels. Researchers and practitioners should consider the impact of both individual- and partner-level factors on condom use motives, in both research and sexual health programs.     

The impact of ethnicity on attitudes toward health care reform in New Mexico

Latinos tend to have significantly lower levels of access to general and top quality medical care than do non-Latino whites, and although disparities in access to health care have diminished for all other minority groups over time, they have widened for Latinos. Given these trends, current attempts to provide universal health care at both the national and state levels across the United States have large implications for the health status of Latinos. The objective of this analysis is to determine whether Latinos have different attitudes regarding health reform than non-Latino whites. Our data are from a statewide random digit dialing telephone survey of New Mexico residents, age 18 and older, conducted in the Fall of 2007. With a Latino population of 44% and ongoing health care reform efforts by the state legislature, New Mexico is an ideal location for this analysis. After controlling for a host of individual level factors, our findings suggest that while Latinos are less likely to identify health care as a salient state issue relative to the economy and crime, they are more likely than non-Latino whites to believe affordable health care programs are important. Finally, Latinos view employers, more than government or individuals, to be responsible for expanding health care coverage.     

More nonconcavities in information processing functions

The productivity of (human) information processing as an economic activity is a question that is raising some interest. Using Marschak's evaluation framework, Radner and Stiglitz have shown that, under certain conditions, the production function of this activity has increasing marginal returns in its initial stage. This paper shows that, under slightly different conditions, this information processing function has repeated convexities with ongoing processing activity. Even for smooth changes in the signals' likelihoods, the function is only piecewise smooth with non-differentiable convexities at points of conditional changes of action. For linear likelihood functions the processing value proves to be piecewise linear with convexities at these levels. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Risk Perception, Federal Spending, and the Savannah River Site: Attitudes of Hunters and Fishermen

This paper examines the attitudes of 285 hunters and fishermen from South Carolina about hunting and fishing, risk, environmental issues, and future land use of the Savannah River Site. We test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in hunting and fishing rates, attitudes toward the safety of fish and deer obtained from SRS, attitudes toward future land use at SRS, and perceptions of the severity of environmental problems as a function of how far respondents lived from the site. Respondents hunted or fished an average of over 40 days a year, and only half felt that the fish and deer from SRS were safe to eat. Willingness to expend federal funds was correlated with perceptions of the severity of the problem. Preferences for future land use at SRS fell into three categories: high (environmental research park, hunting, fishing, camping), medium (nuclear production, factories, preserve only), and low (nuclear waste storage, residential). There were no differences in hunting and fishing rates, ranking of the severity of environmental problems, and willingness to expend federal funds as a function of distance of residence from SRS, but attitudes toward future land use differed significantly as a function of location of residence. Those living close to SRS were more willing to have the site used for factories, residential, nuclear material production and to store nuclear wastes than those living farther from the site. Our data on recreational rates, attitudes toward future land use, and willingness to expend federal funds to solve environmental problems reiterate the importance of assessing stakeholder attitudes toward decisions regarding future land use at DOE sites     

Environmental regulatory influence and product innovation: the contingency effects of organizational characteristics

This paper examines the relationship between environmental regulatory influence and product innovation in a multi-industry sample of manufacturing organizations. Our theory argues that the influence of environmental regulation on the level of product innovation in a manufacturing organization is at least partially contingent on the organization's internal characteristics—in particular, its structural flexibility and production process flexibility. Hypotheses are derived from our theory and tested, and the results are consistent with the conclusion that structural flexibility and production process flexibility moderate the environmental regulatory influence–product innovation relationship. Whether environmental regulation inhibits or promotes product innovation seems to depend at least in part on certain internal features of an organization. We discuss implications of our results for future organization studies research on environmental regulation, and for research on other types of external constraints on organizational performance.     

Unbiased estimation following selection for bernoulli populations

Although a large number of selection procedures have been published in the statistics literature, the selection approach has received only limited use in applications. One drawback to the use of such procedures has been the lack of parameter estimates, which prevents quantitative comparisons among the treatments. To partially address this criticism, we present a general method for constructing unbiased estimators of the success probabilities after the termination of a sequential experiment involving two or more Bernoulli populations. Some theoretical properties are presented, and examples are provided for several different selection procedures.