Cognitive and interpersonal abilities related to the primary activities of R&D managers

This study attempted to identify the primary activities performed by R&D managers at different supervisory levels, and the cognitive and interpersonal ability requirements that underlie these activities. A task inventory containing 244 managerial tasks was completed by 117 R&D managers in nine organizations. The 48 tasks which managers rated as having spent the most time were factor analyzed, resulting in the identification of three primary activities: project management, personnel supervision, and strategic planning. Furthermore, these activities varied with supervisory level, with R&D managers performing a wider range of these activities with the progression from first-line to upper-level management.Thirty R&D managers later rated the degree to which 19 cognitive and interpersonal abilities were required for performing these primary activities. Strategic planning was rated as requiring significantly higher levels of oral expression, logical reasoning, originality, fluency of ideas, oral defense, and resistance to premature judgement than was required for the other two primary activities. Personnel supervision required a higher level of social sensitivity than was required for the other two activities. Project management required high levels of information ordering, oral fact- finding ability, problem sensitivity, and oral and written comprehension. Implications of the findings for understanding R&D managerial performance and personnel staffing functions are discussed.     

Effective boards: how executive directors define and develop them

There is growing recognition in the nonprofit field that the executive director has a key role in determining whether the board of directors will function effectively. To aid executives in this vital role, two recent studies defined a "good board" from the point of view of two samples of executive directors of community agencies, then sought factors related to board performance as measured by this definition. In interviews, executives whose boards scored higher than their peers on this performance measurement related how they work with their boards in such areas as recruitment of new members, financial management, fundraising, and leadership development.     

Negotiating Tensions between Methodology and Procedural Ethics

In this commentary, I consider what can go wrong in research when tensions arise between methodology and procedural ethics. I recount difficulties negotiating and implementing a participant recruitment strategy during my doctoral research project, which aimed to explore the experiences of people affected by dementia in the United Kingdom who were disengaged from services. To access this hard-to-reach population, I intended to adopt an informal recruitment strategy, snowball sampling from personal contacts and striking up conversations in public places. The procedural ethics committee were unhappy with this approach, deeming it potentially coercive. They suggested a more formal recruitment strategy enacted via emailing community organisations and churches. This approach entailed practical consequences that ultimately weakened the study sample, data and findings. This case raises questions about the negotiation of tensions between methodology and procedural ethics in gerontological research.     

When women veterans return: The role of postsecondary education in transition in their civilian lives

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the current state of postsecondary educational settings’ outreach to military women who become students postservice. Participants: Data for the present cross-sectional study were obtained from the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) 2011–2014 National College Health Assessment II (NCHA). Methods: Demographic characteristics of the study sample were explored by calculating frequencies and percentages by military service status. Research questions were explored with Fisher’s exact test, maximum likelihood multiple logistic regression, as appropriate. Results: Women service member and veteran students received health information from their university/college less often than women students with no military experience on the following topics: alcohol and other drug use, depression and anxiety, sexual assault and relationship violence prevention, and stress reduction. Conclusions: The findings of this research identified clear gaps in service provision for women student veterans on college campuses and provided some possible models for intervention development.     

The effects of teenage childbearing on adult soft skills development

Research examining impacts of teenage childbearing on economic and social outcomes have focused on completed schooling and labor force outcomes. In this paper, we examine outcomes that have remained largely unexplored, soft skills and personality. We use Add Health data to construct relevant controls for teenage mothers and explore a set of measures that proxy for what is usually deemed in economics as “non-cognitive” or “soft skill” traits. We find that teenage childbearing increases impulsivity, a trait that has been found to have negative effects on a large set of outcomes and has a negative effect on other personality traits perceived as positive, such as openness to experiences. Our results remain consistent through a set of robustness checks, and we interpret our findings to suggest that adolescence may be a sensitive period for the development of soft skills and that childbearing may interrupt this process.     

The effects of teenage fatherhood on young adult outcomes

This paper uses national longitudinal data and several new empirical strategies to examine the consequences of teenage fatherhood. The key contribution is to compare economic outcomes of young fathers to young men whose partners experienced a miscarriage rather than a live birth. The results suggest that teenage fatherhood decreases years of schooling and the likelihood of receiving a high school diploma and increases general educational development receipt. Teenage fatherhood also appears to increase early marriage and cohabitation, and has mixed short-term effects on several labor market outcomes.     

The Effects of First Occupation on Long Term Health Status: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

In this paper, we use a longitudinal survey that has collected information for 50 years on a large cohort of Wisconsin high school graduates and their siblings to examine the long term impact of early occupational choice on health status. We find evidence that beginning a career in a blue collar occupation is correlated with several measures of poor health outcomes at ages 50–65. Since our dataset includes usually unobserved pre-labor market characteristics, including IQ and childhood health status, we can show that controlling for these variables is important for many results and suggests a high level of selection into occupation based on health and ability. We also provide evidence of gender differentials in the association between first occupation and later health. Then, we replace our basic measure of occupational categories with summary measures of job characteristics and find that employment at “bad jobs” at the beginning of an individual’s career predicts later health outcomes. Finally, we use sibling information in the dataset to show that unmeasured family background factors explain a large share of the effects of occupation on later health. Overall, the evidence points to limited, though heterogeneous, long term effects of health from blue collar employment.     

The effects of family stressors on substance use initiation in adolescence

Smoking and drinking are critical problems in adolescence that have long-term adverse impacts on health and socio-economic factors. We examine the extent to which family stresses influence the timing of initiation of smoking and drinking. Using national panel data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) we capitalize on the survey design and use school-level fixed effects that control for the local environments, including prices of cigarettes and alcohol. In addition, we narrow our control group to classmates who will experience a similar stressor in the future. We find that a composite measure of family stressors when young increases the likelihood of initiating tobacco and alcohol use, with much of the impact attributable to parental divorce. In our baseline estimates, the composite stress measure is associated with a 30% increase in the likelihood of smoking and a 20% increase in drinking. When we control for multiple sources of confounding, the impact shrinks and remains significant for smoking but not for drinking. We conclude that studies which do not control for confounding are likely to significantly overestimate the impact of family stress on substance use. Our approach helps to move the literature forward by separating causal results from spurious associations.     

The Meaning,Antecedents and Outcomes of Employee Engagement: A Narrative Synthesis

The claim that high levels of engagement can enhance organizational performance and individual well‐being has not previously been tested through a systematic review of the evidence. To bring coherence to the diffuse body of literature on engagement, the authors conducted a systematic synthesis of narrative evidence involving 214 studies focused on the meaning, antecedents and outcomes of engagement. The authors identified six distinct conceptualizations of engagement, with the field dominated by the Utrecht Group's ‘work engagement’ construct and measure, and by the theorization of engagement within the ‘job demands–resources’ framework. Five groups of factors served as antecedents to engagement: psychological states; job design; leadership; organizational and team factors; and organizational interventions. Engagement was found to be positively associated with individual morale, task performance, extra‐role performance and organizational performance, and the evidence was most robust in relation to task performance. However, there was an over‐reliance on quantitative, cross‐sectional and self‐report studies within the field, which limited claims of causality. To address controversies over the commonly used measures and concepts in the field and gaps in the evidence‐base, the authors set out an agenda for future research that integrates emerging critical sociological perspectives on engagement with the psychological perspectives that currently dominate the field.