Researching students’ strategies, episodes, and metacognitions in mathematical problem solving

The purpose of this study was to investigate the problem solving strategies, problem solving episodes, and metacognitions of five Turkish high school freshmen and explore the interplay of these on their problem solving success in mathematics. Participants worked on ten problems selected among the released mathematical literacy items used in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. The research data had been collected through clinical interviews and a self-monitoring questionnaire filled by the participants. The data were coded and analysed according to a framework adopted from various researchers in the field. Our results have confirmed that the problem solving success is too complex to be clarified by a unique property or behaviour of the solver. It requires overcoming various obstacles to reach a successful result. Therefore, not only the students should have the required mathematical knowledge and a good repertoire of different problem solving strategies, but also they should know when and how to use those strategies, along with monitoring and regulating their problem-solving processes using their metacognitive skills.     

Russian workers’ experiences with and perceptions of sexual harassment severity

As the reach of global business operations increases, cultural context will likely influence the nature and amount of sexual harassment workers experience. Surprisingly, little is known about sexual harassment in Russia, an attractive target for expanding companies. To address this gap in the literature, we examine Russian workers’ perceptions of sexual harassment severity through the lens of cultural context. In particular, we examine the sexual harassment severity perceptions from the perspective of both targets and perpetrators. Results indicate that as targets of sexual harassment, Russian women and men held similar sexual harassment severity perceptions. However, as perpetrators, Russian women reported perceiving the harassment they committed as being less severe than the reports of Russian men. Further, among both targets and perpetrators, Russian women held less permissive sexual attitudes than Russian men, with this difference mediating the relationship between participant sex and perceived sexual harassment severity: women perceived greater severity than men because women hold less permissive sexual attitudes. Implications for research, practice, and the role of national culture in shaping the social construction of sexual harassment are discussed.     

Public Management and Network Specificity: Effects of colleges’ ties with professional organizations on graduates’ labour market success and satisfaction

Abstract

Research on managerial networking in the public sector reports positive effects of network activity on performance. However, little is known about which network relations influence different aspects of performance. We argue that for specific organizational goals, organizations should direct their networking activities towards specific types of organizations. We explore how different types of network relations of Dutch colleges for nursing studies affect the performance of these colleges. We analyse the effect of ties with professional organizations on: (1) graduates’ program satisfaction, (2) graduates’ wages and (3) graduates’ employment (n = 1,484 graduates). Multilevel analyses show that colleges’ ties with professional organizations positively affect graduates’ wages and employment.     

The Fama-French’s five-factor model relation with interest rates and macro variables

Innovations in variables describing future investment opportunities command a risk premium and are correlated with Fama-French factors. As showed in literature, shocks to the aggregate dividend yield and term spread, default spread, and one-month T-bill rate are proxies for HML and SMB factors. However, in the context of five-factor model, they cannot explain RMW. As CPI is related to operational profitability, and so does RMW, we include its unanticipated shocks in the set of macro variables and factors to help explaining the cross section of returns. In the presence of CPI, RMW loses its explanatory power, and, combined with term structure’s slope innovations, all Fama-French factors lose their explanatory ability and the pricing errors become statistically close to zero. We show that for US data, inflation’s innovations not only proxy for RMW, but a model including only excess market returns, shocks to CPI and term structure’s slope explain the cross section of average returns better than innovations to the previous literature’s four-variable set and Fama-French five-factor model.     

Changes in women’s and men’s child care time in China, 2004–2011: the contributions of cohort replacement and intra-cohort change

With the rapid social and economic changes in China, increasing attention has been paid to issues related to child care, such as maternal work and child care, child care support sources, and work-family conflict. But the change in women’s and men’s child care time in the last decade remains under-researched. I use cross-sectional data from the 2004–2011 China Health and Nutrition Survey and linear decomposition regression techniques to examine the mechanisms generating structural change in child care time for men and women. I find that overall women’s child care time is slightly decreasing because the contributions of intra-cohort change and cohort replacement are offsetting one another. However, men’s childcare time is increasing during the same time period because of processes of intra-cohort change. Trends in women’s childcare time indicate a positive but small cohort replacement effect, whereas men’s childcare time is largely impacted by a positive intra-cohort change effect. These results highlight the mechanisms through which the gendered division of childcare time inside Chinese families has been shifting in the direction of increasing egalitarianism from 2004 to 2011.     

Global team members’ performance and the roles of cross-cultural training,cultural intelligence,and contact intensity: the case of global teams in IT offshoring sector

Abstract

This study investigates an unexplored form of global team prevalent in the Information Technology (IT) offshoring sector where IT service providers work alongside with client representatives in a global team context. Guided by theories of intelligence and intergroup contact, this study investigates global team members’ individual-level task performance. Specifically, this study examines the development of global team members’ cultural intelligence (CQ) following cross-cultural training. This study also determines the effects of improved CQ on individual-level task performance and examines the moderating role of contact intensity on the relationship between improved CQ and individual-level task performance. Data on the development of CQ, participation in cross-cultural training, and contact intensity were collected from 225 global team members while data on task performance were obtained from each of the global team members’ supervisors. The results of the statistical analyses reveal that: (i) CQ improved following participation in cross-cultural training sessions; (ii) improved CQ is positively and significantly related to individual-level task performance; and (iii) contact intensity moderates the relationship between improved CQ and individual-level task performance. These findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications for international organizations such as those in the IT offshoring sector.     

Daily momentum profits with firm characteristics and investors’ optimism in the Taiwan market

In this paper, we examine two different investing attitudes, being conservative sentiment which mitigates the momentum effect and, alternatively, the optimistic sentiment which strengthens such an effect. Where the stock market index levels close near a previous peak level, the impact of the index on momentum profits can assist in identifying such sentiments. In this study, we investigate the price and price-size momentum strategies in Taiwan of short formation periods of less than a month. The results indicate that investors adopt optimistic attitudes towards the 5-day and 20-day highs in the market index, whereas a conservative attitude is adopted at the 52-week high. Using the quantile regression model, the results indicate that the momentum effect is mitigated when the stock index price is relatively high for higher momentum profits. On the other hand, the momentum effect is strengthened when the stock index price is relatively high for lower momentum profits. However, the high point of the stock index is not found to have any impact on the price-B/M momentum effect.     

An evolutionary model of industry dynamics and firms’ institutional behavior with job search, bargaining and matching

By combining features from distinct theoretical approaches, namely the evolutionary and the job search, matching and bargaining literatures, we propose a model that captures the main dynamics of a world where heterogeneous firms and workers interact and co-evolve. Within a micro-meso framework, the model focuses on the influence of firms’ labour choices (“institutional settings”) on industry dynamics, taking into account the existence of employment adjustment costs. The consideration of endogenous matching and bargaining processes in the labour market results in significant frictions, such as the simultaneous coexistence of unfilled job vacancies and unemployment. In a setting where technological progress is not biased a stylized fact of industrialized world economies in the last few decades emerges, the increasing wage inequality. Additionally, turbulence in the industry increases after a negative demand shock. As expected, the negative demand shock causes a decrease in the number of vacancies and, consequently, unemployment rates increase considerably. Interestingly, and mimicking the recent experiences of countries such as US, Spain, Greece and Portugal, the rise in unemployment is matched by a rise in contractual wages. This outcome is explained by the lower ability of the firms to fill their posted vacancies, which results from friction in the interactions among agents.     

On Vind’s theorem for an economy with atoms and infinitely many commodities

We extend Vind’s classical theorem on the measure of blocking coalitions valid in finite dimensional atomless economies (see Vind (1972)), to include the possibility of infinitely many commodities as well as the presence of atoms. The commodity space is assumed to be an ordered Banach space which has possibly the empty positive cone. The lack of interior points is compensated by an additional assumption of a cone of arbitrage that allows us to use Lyapunov’s convexity theorem in its weak form. The measure space of agents involves both negligible and non negligible traders. The extension is proved in the general class of Aubin coalitions for which a suitable version of Grodal’s result (Grodal (1972)) is also formulated. Our results wish to point out the relevance of cone conditions dealing with blocking coalitions of arbitrary measure or weight.     

What influences teachers’ job satisfaction and how to improve,develop and reorganize the school activities associated with them

Quality & Quantity - Job satisfaction is a positive emotional state resulting from a personal appreciation of a his/her own job or experience. The paper reports on a study that examined job...     

What’s in it for others? The relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change among youth care professionals

This study assesses the relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change among youth care professionals. We draw on person–environment fit theory to propose that this relationship is conditional on employees’ perceived meaningfulness of the change for society and clients. Our results confirm the expected positive relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change. Our analysis suggests that the moderating relationship between prosocial motivation, client meaningfulness and commitment to change should be understood as a substitutive relationship: both prosocial motivation and client meaningfulness are sufficient conditions, but the presence of both is not a necessary condition for commitment to change.     

Why homeowners’ documentation went missing under the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP)?: An analysis of strategic behavior of homeowners and servicers

This study investigated why documentation of certain homeowners who participated in the trial period plan (TPP) of HAMP went missing using a model of strategic behavior of homeowners and servicers. I found that the likelihood of cancellation of the TPP for missing documentation was higher for those who were current on their mortgage payments, compared to those 30 days delinquent, prior to entering the plan—both types of homeowners entered the program because they were in danger of imminent default. This finding, which is consistent with servicers “steering” homeowners with low credit risk away from HAMP to their own (proprietary) modifications, is more likely for loans owned or guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) than non-GSE loans—the GSE loans have relatively more homeowners with low credit risks. The outcome, not widespread across servicers, is possibly related to the lack of standardization across servicers in identifying borrowers in danger of imminent default. Missing documentation is also associated with severely delinquent homeowners who had less incentive or were unable to submit complete documentation. This cohort of borrowers could benefit from financial education and Treasury’s proposal that servicers provide a single point of contact for borrowers would help reduce the problem of missing documentation.     

Full circle support: unpacking the relationship between women entrepreneurs’ family-to-work support and work interference with family

With an anchoring in conservation of resources theory, this study examines the mediating role of women entrepreneurs’ work-related emotional exhaustion in the relationship between their family-to-business support and work interference with family, as well as the moderating role of the entrepreneurial character of their company’s strategy in this process. Survey data collected from women entrepreneurs in Argentina indicate that a notable reason that business support received from the family diminishes work interference with that same family is that it abates the sense of being overburdened by work. This benefit of reduced exhaustion is especially prominent to the extent that women entrepreneurs pursue an energy-consuming, entrepreneurial strategy for their business. For entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners, this research accordingly reveals a critical channel through which supportive family relationships can decrease the probability that women entrepreneurs bring work challenges home (i.e., diminished depletion of work energy), and it shows how this explanatory factor varies with the strategic profile they adopt for their business.

     

How are newspaper companies using social media to engage and connect with their audiences? characteristics and forms of Korean newspapers’ YouTube use

The present study classifies the characteristics of YouTube use by South Korean newspapers in terms of both “local proximity” and “reported them” of news content. Several kinds of data related to news production and consumption were collected from the opening of the YouTube account to October 11, 2012. Findings suggest that news content strategies for YouTube are different across newspapers. National newspapers are likely to perceive YouTube as a new medium, whereas local newspapers tend to perceive it as an extension of the existing newspaper. The results also reveal that YouTube strategies based on strongly partisan or critical reports or oppositional parodies can work better than those providing a diverse and universally appealing range of content.     

Combining common-weights DEA window with the Malmquist index: A case of China’s iron and steel industry

In the conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) window analysis, a decision-making unit (DMU) in each window is treated as different units in each period so that the evaluation for one unit is performed on different scales over time. This paper proposes a novel window analysis based on common weight across time (CWAT), which evaluates each unit in each window by its common scale independent of time. The model for obtaining common weights is described as linear programming. And the paper suggests the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) on CWAT, CWAT MPI, to analyze productivity change by inheriting the result of window analysis. The numerical experiments are illustrated to examine the validity of CWAT and MPI, and the result shows that the proposed method provides a new evaluation scale compared to previous studies. The proposed model is applied to evaluate the performance of China 45 iron and steel enterprises during 2009–2017. The energy and environmental efficiency are calculated using CWAT, and CWAT MPI analyzes the productivity change.     

Assessment of meaningful change in routine outcome measurement (ROM) with a combination of a longitudinal and a ‘classify and count’ approach

To assess significant changes of health status in people receiving health care, distribution-based and anchor-based methods have been proposed. However, there is no real consensus on what method is the best for evaluating clinically meaningful change. To maximize the internal and external validity of outcome assessment, we propose combining two approaches as recommended by recent practical guidelines on this field. Specifically, we suggest applying longitudinal hierarchical linear models on subgroups of patients showing reliable change and reliable and clinically significant change. This combined approach improved the model’s ability (1) to quantify the magnitude of changes to be reliable and clinically meaningful and (2) to select significant predictors of changes. An empirical application on a prevalence sample of Italian outpatients attending four community mental health services was done. A cross-sectional model and three longitudinal models were applied on the entire study sample and reliable and clinically meaningful change subsamples to investigate the magnitude of change and the predictive effect on outcomes of clinical, socio-demographic and process variables on different patients’ subgroups. Differences were found suggesting that both the statistical method and the sample used to calculate individual changes affect the estimates. The main conclusion is that ignoring the longitudinal data structure or including patients with unreliable change at the follow-up might result in misleading inferences that can alter the real magnitude of changes and the contributions of predictors. The approach proposed provides robust feedback to clinicians on clinically significant change and can be recommended in outcome studies and research.     

SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears

Considering the Italian legal environment, this work aims to shed new light on the behavior of SMEs under financial constraints, investigating how the inefficiency of courts in enforcing credit rights can affect their corporate finance. On the one hand, our results confirm previous findings on the pecking order theory, supporting the hypothesis of substitution between financial debts and trade credits. On the other hand, based on our evidence, if SMEs are affected by judicial inefficiency, we can expect their access to both the capital market and trade credit to be limited by the uncertainty of the legal environment, causing them to use tax arrears to raise internal liquidity. Indeed, if the time needed to settle insolvency cases decreases by 20%, we can expect an increase in the financial debt ratio between 1.07% and 3.87% and in the trade credit ratio between 0.14% and 1.35%, while, focusing on tax arrears, we can expect a decrease in the tax debt ratio between 0.78% and 1.61%.     

The persistence of the small firm/January effect: Is it consistent with investors’ learning and arbitrage efforts?

Using improved methodology and an expanded research design, we examine whether the small firm/January effect (Keim, D. B. (1983). Size-related anomalies and stock return seasonality: further empirical evidence. Journal of Financial Economics 12:13–32), is declining over time due to market efficiency. First, we find that January returns are smaller after 1963–1979, but have simply reverted to levels that existed before that time. Second, we show that the January effect is not limited to mature markets but also appears in firms trading on the relatively new NASDAQ exchange in the 1970s. Third, trading volume for small firms in December and January is not different from other months, implying that traders are not actively arbitraging the anomaly. Together, our results suggest that this anomaly continues to defy rational explanation in an efficient market.     

On the advantages of economically designed the Hotelling’s T2 control chart with variable sample sizes and sampling intervals

Faraz and Parsian (Statistical Paper, 47: 569–593, 2006) have shown that the double warning lines (DWL) scheme detects process shifts more quickly than the other variable ratio sampling schemes such as variable sample sizes (VSS), variable sampling intervals (VSI) and variable sample sizes and sampling intervals (VSSVSI). In this paper, the DWLT²control chart for monitoring the process mean vector is economically designed. The cost model proposed by Costa and Rahim (Journal of Applied Statistics, 28: 875–885, 2001) is used here and is minimized through a genetic algorithm (GA) approach. Then the effects of the model parameters on the chart parameters and resulting operating loss is studied and finally a comparison between all possible variable ratio sampling (VRS) schemes are made to choose the best option economically.