Nursing leadership: championing quality and patient safety in the boardroom

OBJECTIVE: Identify the extent to which hospital boards of trustees, CEOs, and CNOs are engaged in quality and safety at the leadership and governance level and how CNOs can support board engagement in quality and safety. BACKGROUND: Although research is emerging, still relatively little is known about the impact and interface of hospital boards of trustees, CEOs, and nursing executives related to improving quality and patient safety. METHODS: 73 telephone interviews were conducted with hospital board chairs, CEOs, and CNOs from a convenience sample of 63 U.S. hospitals. The interviews (22 of which were with CNOs) lasted 30 to 45 minutes and were supplemented by a focus group of five nursing executives. RESULTS: There are significant differences in the perceptions of CNOs versus those of board chairs and CEOs. CNOs reported a greater familiarity of landmark reports on quality and patient safety than board chairs. CEOs and board chairs gave substantially higher ratings to integration of quality planning. Boards have limited comprehension of salient nursing quality issues. CONCLUSION: CNOs have a critical role as boardroom champions of patient safety and quality improvement.     

Finding Donors by Relationship Fundraising

Our research utilizes revenue–business-based relationships and data to expand the donor bases of non-profit organizations. Fundraisers desire to predict who will donate and how much to allocate their marketing resources effectively. To answer both questions, we develop the Spatial Tobit Type 2 (ST2) model that integrates the auto-Logistic (AL) and auto-Gaussian (AG) models into the Tobit type 2 framework. The AL component is used to predict who is likely to donate by inferring inter-client similarities based on the clients' transaction information from the revenue businesses. Similarly, the AG component is used to predict how much based on a similar measure of inter-client similarities. The Tobit type 2 framework combines both components into the single framework of ST2. Our empirical application linking a veterinary school's medical treatment records to its donation records demonstrates that clients' relationships built through their medical treatments at the school hospital positively contribute to their donation decisions.     

Developing the Leadership Capacity and Leader Efficacy of College Women in Science,Technology, Engineering,and Math Fields

The current study examined the extent to which college women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors demonstrated differential levels of leadership capacity and/or leader efficacy than their non‐STEM, female peers. Data represented 14,698 women from 86 institutions of higher education in the United States. Results indicated similar levels of leadership capacity but significantly lower leader efficacy for women in STEM majors. Implications explore unique predictors of leader efficacy for women in STEM majors along with recommendations for changes to policy and professional practice that might address how the differential organizational contexts shape leadership development.     

Sports sponsorship perceptions: An exploration

This study examines how consumers perceive sports sponsorship by a financial services organisation. Current literature provides information on the advantages and objectives of sponsorship to an organisation. However, it is evident that there is little on how consumers react to sponsorship and in particular how the differences in brand and event involvement (EI) affect response. Data was collected from two audiences of a sponsored sports event, those who attended the game and those who did not. The research findings indicate that, in the context of sponsorship activity, brand involvement is a direct positive influence on brand attractiveness and brand meaningfulness. This study also shows that EI has a direct negative influence on brand trustworthiness. Those who were classed as involved spectators considered the brand to be less trustworthy. Limitations of the study include the economic environment, type of research method and sample size. Areas of further research are recommended.     

Testing how information about cost-effectiveness,cause preferences,and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving

The broad instrumental philanthropy movement advocates for considerations of cost-effective impact in donation decisions. Within that broader movement, the effective altruism movement goes as far as to advocate for cause neutrality and geographic neutrality when prioritizing cost-effectiveness in charity. We present a survey experiment that examined how information about cost-effectiveness, cause area preferences, and geographic preferences interact to affect philanthropic giving. The experiment varied these three dimensions in a hypothetical giving situation and found that cost-effectiveness information had the strongest influence on hypothetical giving. Participants gave most when presented with charities that were shown to be highly cost-effective, local/domestic, and that matched their preferred cause area. Understanding how these three considerations interact to affect donors is important as donors continue to desire more information about the cost-effective impact of their donation.     

Coke is It: How stories in childhood memories illuminate an icon

This paper builds on consumer storytelling theory and childhood memory research by proposing that earliest childhood memory stories are useful for developing brand myths and providing relevance to iconic brands. This article investigates consumers' childhood memories with Coca-Cola and finds that memories from early childhood are more predictive and insightful for understanding current brand attitudes than memories coming from adolescence. A focus group is unable to elicit memories from as early in life as the childhood memory session. In addition, the memories elicited by the group interviewer are not as relevant and meaningful to participants. When participants read experiences coming from the childhood memory session, those who connect with the earliest childhood memory stories have the strongest attitudes toward Coca-Cola. A discussion describes how this research method aids in generating insights about iconic brands and brands aspiring to become iconic.     

The changing economic status of U.S. disabled men: Trends and their determinants, 1982–1991

We track the level of economic well-being of the population of men who began receiving Social Security Disability Insurance benefits in 1980–81 from the time just after they became beneficiaries (in 1982) to 1991. We present measures of the economic well-being of disabled individuals and their nondisabled peers as indicators of the relative economic position of these two groups. These measures also provide an intertemporal comparison of well-being and hardship as disabled persons and their nondisabled peers age and retire. We first show several economic well-being indicators for new male recipients of disability benefits in 1982 and 1991. We then compare their economic position to that of a matched group of nondisabled males with sufficient work histories to have been disability-insured. Because labor market changes over this decade have led to a relative deterioration in the position of younger and less-educated workers, we compare men with disabilities to those without disabilities and distinguish different age and educational levels within the groups. We conclude by assessing the antipoverty effectiveness of Social Security income support for both younger and older male SSDI recipients. First version received: May 1998/final version received: July 1999     

Compositional Effects of Capital Controls – Theory and Evidence

This paper examines the effects of capital controls on the composition of inter‐national capital flows, paying particular attention to debt inflows versus equity inflows. A two‐period small open economy model with stochastic second‐period output and asymmetric information between domestic agents and international financiers is utilised to generate predictions regarding the effects of capital controls on the relative use of debt versus equity for financing first‐period investment. These capital control implications are then investigated with quarterly frequency panel data for Latin America. Capital controls are found to significantly affect the composition of the capital account.     

Firm values and sovereign wealth fund investments

We analyze the impact of sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investments on firm values and provide evidence consistent with the tradeoff between the monitoring and lobbying benefits versus tunneling and expropriation costs of SWFs as blockholders. The data show significant positive (negative) returns to announcements of SWF investments (divestments). The returns are non-monotonic, first rising (falling) and then falling (rising) with the share sought (sold) for investments (divestments). Moreover, we find that SWFs are often active investors. Slightly more than half of the target firms experience one or more events indicative of SWF monitoring activity or influence.     

Telling more than the truth: Implicature,speech acts,and ethics in professional communication

Ethicists have long observed that unethical communication may result from texts that contain no overt falsehoods but are nevertheless misleading. Less clear, however, has been the way that context and text work together to create misleading communication. Concepts from linguistics can be used to explain implicature and indirect speech acts, two patterns which, though in themselves not unethical, may allow misinterpretations and, therefore, create potentially unethical communication. Additionally, sociolinguistic theory provides insights into why writers in business and other professions are prone to use these patterns. An analysis of five cases shows that implicature and indirectness are sometimes used intentionally to deceive readers. However, their use may also reflect other motives such as the desire to mitigate negative information or to show deference to an unfamiliar or powerful reader. Although implicature and indirectness are not intended to deceive in these cases, they can lead to a loss of clarity and to subsequent ethical problems when readers misinterpret texts.Kathryn Riley is an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where she teaches Advanced Business Writing and various courses in the Linguistics Program. She has published a number of articles on linguistics and writing, and is co-author ofExercises in Linguistics (1990).