PROBING "DONT KNOW" ANSWERS: EFFECTS ON SURVEY ESTIMATES AND VARIABLE RELATIONSHIPS

Don't Know responses to survey questions are ambiguous becausethe same words are used by respondents to mean different things—ignorance,indecision, or uncertainty about the meaning of the questionasked. In order to clarify the meaning of such answers, surveyinterviewers are frequently trained to probe Don't Know answersat least once before the answer is considered final. We arguethat unconditional probing of Don't Know answers may not bea desirable practice, particularly as regards knowledge items.Large unintended effects on responses to four knowledge itemsresulted when two groups of interviewers, who administered thesame survey questions, probed Don't Know responses at differentrates. Strong evidence is provided in the article that the probingof Don't Know answers encouraged guesswork on the part of uninformedrespondents, giving rise to significant distributional differencesand differences in means across half samples for the affectedvariables. However, relationships between variables appear tobe largely unaffected by probing effects. In order to formulatevalid probing guidelines for interviewer training, further researchis needed to establish whether the findings for knowledge questionsgeneralize to factual questions.     

Dynamically Consistent Preferences with Quadratic Beliefs

This article characterizes a family of preference relations over uncertain prospects that (a) are dynamically consistent in the Machina sense and, moreover, for which the updated preferences are also members of this family and (b) can simultaneously accommodate Ellsberg- and Allais-type paradoxes.Replacing the "mixture independence" axiom by "mixture symmetry" proposed by Chew, Epstein, and Segal (1991) for decision making under objective risk, and requiring that for some partition of the state space the agent perceives ambiguity and so prefers a randomization over outcomes across that partition (proper uncertainty aversion), preferences can be represented by a (proper) quadratic functional. This representation may be further refined to allow a separation between the quantification of beliefs and risk preferences that is closed under dynamically consistent updating.     

Application of load-oriented manufacturing control in industry

This paper deals with multi-stage lotsizing models for imperfect production processes. The effect of imperfect quality on lotsizing decisions and effect ofinspection errorsare taken into consideration in the proposed models. Numerical examples are presented for illustration purposes. The developed models are very helpful for justifying quality assurance and quality improvement efforts.     

The History of the Social Constructions of Dönmes (Converts)*

This paper investigates the history of social constructions, principally conspiracy theories, about a crypto‐Jewish group, the Dönmes, in Turkey. It considers the socio‐political reasons for the conspiracy theories and their significance by analysing their contents in different periods. The findings suggest that the fluid identity of Dönmes makes them stranger figures, in a sociological sense, creates public mistrust and encourages conspiratorial explanations. Moreover, the study shows that the conspiracy theories surrounding Dönmes are also fed by the ontological insecurities of Turkish politics, and that conspiracy theories tend to have appeal for alienated groups during major social transformations.     

Worker Participation and the Social Service Agency

Summary Is there real sharing of decision-making responsibility withinsocial service agencies? What hope is there for participationby the consumer of services if the agency worker nearest andmost relevant to him has little voice or leverage within theorganization? This paper examines the notion of worker participationwithin the context of the social services department and theprobation service, noting the imperfections of the ‘publicmandate’ behind the authority structure of these organizations.Above all it looks for continuity between the values socialservice agencies publicly represent and the values in theirday-to-day dealings with their own staff and clients. Currenttrade union proposals for worker representation at committeelevel are considered, and Dutch experience in extending theworkers' council from the industrial to the social welfare sphereis presented as one alternative model.     

Contingencies versus External Pressure: Professionalization in Boards of Firms Affiliated to Family Business Groups in Late‐Industrializing Countries

We examine the antecedents of professionalization in boards of firms affiliated to family business groups, increasingly recognized in the literature as the dominant form of big business organization in many late‐industrializing countries. Dimensions of board professionalization that we include in our study are board size, ratio of salaried executives and outsider presence. We compare predictions on board composition derived from contingency, institutional and power perspectives. Turkish family business groups, considered as an archetypal example of this form of organization, provide the empirical setting for the study, with data on 299 firms affiliated to ten different family business groups. Our results provide greater support for institutional and power perspectives, showing that, relative to internal and external complexity facing affiliate firms, institutional pressures and the presence of joint venture partners better predict board professionalization.     

Estimation of a Change Point in a Hazard Function Based on Censored Data

The hazard function plays an important role in reliability or survival studies since it describes the instantaneous risk of failure of items at a time point, given that they have not failed before. In some real life applications, abrupt changes in the hazard function are observed due to overhauls, major operations or specific maintenance activities. In such situations it is of interest to detect the location where such a change occurs and estimate the size of the change. In this paper we consider the problem of estimating a single change point in a piecewise constant hazard function when the observed variables are subject to random censoring. We suggest an estimation procedure that is based on certain structural properties and on least squares ideas. A simulation study is carried out to compare the performance of this estimator with two estimators available in the literature: an estimator based on a functional of the Nelson-Aalen estimator and a maximum likelihood estimator. The proposed least squares estimator tums out to be less biased than the other two estimators, but has a larger variance. We illustrate the estimation method on some real data sets.     

Shifting global supply networks and fast fashion: made in Turkey for Marks & Spencer

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was noted that retailers in Britain had started providing increased variety and fashionability to their customers, had added mid‐season purchasing to their previous two‐season calendars, and that a high fashion and low price ‘throwaway market’ had appeared on the retail scene. Since then mid‐season purchasing has evolved into purchasing throughout the year; and the ‘throwaway market’ (now called fast fashion) has become almost the norm. Here we revisit one of those British retailers (Marks & Spencer) together with its Turkish suppliers and observe a trend towards the diffusion of design capabilities to suppliers that is more widespread than is suggested in the literature. We also consider the question of how most appropriately to conceptualize the nature of these retailer‐ supplier relations in today's circumstances. We especially look into the manner in which these relations are reflected in price negotiations, the eventual distribution of the value‐added, and the nature of everyday interactions such as accreditation and reclamation practices. We conclude that even though Turkish suppliers seem to be successfully upgrading into design–a high value‐added activity–the question of whether or not this development has entailed a renegotiation of power between retailer and supplier remains a complicated one.