Therapeutic implications of continuing bonds expressions following the death of a pet

Through the exploration of 12 continuing bonds expressions (CBE), this current study investigated the grief reaction and continuing impact of the death of a pet. Thirty-three individuals were interviewed to determine the degree of connection maintained with the deceased pet and how that affects their coping. Findings emphasize that the majority of respondents frequently maintain ongoing meaningful ties with their deceased pet through the use of CBE such as fond memories, rituals, dreams. The findings suggest that it is not the number of CBE but the degree of adaptability that is significant. The importance of recognizing the unique, total experience of those grieving the death of a pet is addressed. Implications for those working with and supporting those in grief are included. Future directions for research are described.     

The Role Structure of Chinese Managers

The study investigates the role structure of managers in China's Henan province. The results produce a two-facet classification consistent with Shapira and Dunbar's findings for North American managers, yet displaying a number of unique features attributed to the Chinese business environment. The leader's role of the Chinese manager splits into task-related and relationship-oriented activities, and the monitor role is plotted across the informational and decision facets. An addition to this study, the political role is also found across the two facets, providing integration across the various managerial activities. An open system model of the Chinese managerial role is proposed.     

The evolution of secularization: cultural transmission, religion and fertility—theory, simulations and evidence

This study presents an evolutionary process of secularization assuming that cultural/social/religious norms (in particular the ‘religious taste for children’) are transmitted from one generation to the next via two venues: (i) direct socialization—across generations, by parents; and (ii) oblique socialization—within generations, by the cultural environment. The paper integrates a theoretical model, simulations and an empirical estimation, that lead to the following main findings: (i) direct religious socialization efforts of one generation have a negative effect on secularization within the next generation; (ii) oblique socialization by the community has a parabolic effect on secularization; and (iii) the two types of socialization are complementary in ‘producing’ religiosity in the next generation.     

The compressed work week as organizational change: behavioral and attitudinal outcomes

The results from recent studies on the compressed work week have been compiled and categorized in order to provide some basis for generalizing the effects of the work schedule on employee attitudes and behavior. It appears that attitudes toward the compressed week are favorable, with some generalization to job attitudes. Performance outcomes are ambiguous, although there are no reported decreases; fatigue seems to be the only negative aspect of the longer day. An examination of mediating variables suggests more complex relationships between the implementation of the compressed work week and potential outcomes. These relationships are described and directions are indicated for future research.     

Dissaggregation of deviations in cost analysis

The decisions on investigation of cost deviations have been generally discussed in the cost control literature assuming deviations are monitored and reported at a certain level of aggregation. This paper focuses on the relationship between the level of aggregation of the reporting system and the effectiveness of the investigating decisions. It suggests that, by incorporating into the decision process the prior knowledge managers have about the deviation sources, the deviation report could be further disaggregated leading to improved investigation decisions. This is done by using the reported deviation to update the prior distribution of its possible sources in a Bayesian manner. The resulting system is less costly to monitor than a system which monitors all the possible sources of a deviation, although it is less exact. The paper illustrates how the selection of the optimal level of aggregation should be made simultaneously with the information system and the decision rules.     

Is stock price a good measure for assessing value-relevance of earnings? An empirical test

Recently, a growing body of literature has created a widespread impression that financial statements have lost their value-relevance because of a shift from traditional capital-intensive economy into a high technology, service-oriented economy. In particular, the claim is that financial statements are less relevant in assessing the fundamental value of high technology, service-oriented firms/activities, which are by nature knowledge-intensive. These conclusions are based on past studies that examine the association between accounting numbers (i.e., earnings and book values) and stock prices and show that, in general, the association between accounting information and stock prices has been declining, over time. These findings have been interpreted to be the result of a decline in value relevance of accounting. We examine the predictive content of stock prices and accounting information, as against the contemporaneous association between accounting information and stock prices. We find that while both the predictive content of earnings and prices declined over time, the predictive content of price signals declined by even more. Our analysis suggests that the declining association could be the consequence of increased noise in stock prices over time resulting from increases in trading volume driven by non-information based trades, and not just a decline in the predictive content of earnings. More importantly, this conclusion is consistent with the insights of the noisy rational expectations equilibrium framework analysis, i.e. that increased noise has caused the predictive content of prices to degrade over time. Overall, our evidence suggests that stock prices may not be an appropriate benchmark for gauging the information content of accounting earnings.

ORTHOGONAL INFORMATION STRUCTURES—A MODEL TO EVALUATE THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY A SECOND OPINION

The paper discusses the value of information when a number of independent sources provide information related to a common set of states of nature. The starting point is the information economic model of information structures. The model is augmented to represent independence of informational sources by means of orthogonality of the information structures. A new mathematical operator, orthogonal product, is defined and its properties are probed. It is shown that this operator maintains some mathematical properties such as closure, association, unity element, null element, and so forth. It is demonstrated how the orthogonal product represents the notion of multisource information. The paper proves that an orthogonal product is generally more informative than its multipliers, namely, if cost is not considered a constraining factor, then there is a nonnegative value to obtaining a second opinion. An appendix to the paper expands this result to a case of partially dependent signals. The paper concludes with a numerical example and a discussion of the model's applicability for practical problems such as cost estimates.     

EFFECTS OF BUDGETARY CONTROL DESIGN ON MANAGEMENT DECISIONS: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE*

An examination of budgetary slack behavior reveals that managerial characteristics and the economic environment may contribute to the failure of budgetary control systems. Large management-controlled firms that operate in industries with high barriers to entry behave as if they allocate more slack resources when compared with owner-controlled firms of similar size and market power. The results confirm that accounting operating-income numbers reflect manifestations of slack behavior in the budgetary process. Management-controlled firms in particular seem to act as if they fail to release and redistribute slack resources. It is concluded that budgetary slack behavior points to failures in the organization design that may lead to inefficient allocation of resources and to inferior profit performance.