Le burn-out: Est-il une maladie?

Dans cet article on examine le concept de burn-out en regard de la nosographiepsychiatrique (notamment la dépression). Le burn-out ressemble à plusieurs diagnostics sans leur ětre assimilable, notamment, parce qu'il n'a pas de critères systématiques d'inclusion et d'exclusion de symptǒmes. Il n'est pas évident qu'il s'agisse d'un maladie spécifique, ni měme d'une maladie tout court. Le niveau de burn-out, tel que mesuré par les échelles, est en relation avec plusieurs caractéristiques organisationnelles: ǎge du travailleur conflit de rǒle, ambiguïté de rǒle, satisfaction au travail, style de leadership. Le burn-out a donc certainement une composante organisationnelle. Mais, son importance sociale semble suggérer une problématique récente quant au sens du travail. Abstract In this paper, the concept of burn-out is analyzed with regard to psychiatric nosography (depression more specifically). Burn-out is similar to several diagnoses without being included in them because it has no systematic criteria of exclusion or inclusion of symptoms. Moreover, it is not obvious that we are dealing with a specific illness or with an illness at all. The level of burn-out, as it is measured, is related to various organizational characteristics such as the age of the worker, role conflict, role ambiguity, professional satisfaction and style of leadership. Therefore, there is most certainly an organizational component in burn-out, but its social importance seems to suggest a recent problem relating to the meaning of work.     

Protected Areas in an era of global–local change

This review article advances debate and research on the global–local nexus that shapes, and increasingly determines, the existence of Protected Areas (PAs) and their function as areas of high conservation value as well as tourism destinations. The demands on PAs have grown from an initial focus on facilitating recreation experiences and species and habitat protection, to more inclusive and participatory approaches that seek to safeguard ecological services whilst also supporting regional and national livelihoods. We propose that the simultaneous analysis of global and local drivers of change will generate a deeper understanding of impact processes and response implications. To this end, a draft framework for better understanding the global–local nexus of PAs is developed and tested through a Delphi sketching approach to 20 experts in least developed, newly industrialised and developed countries. Key challenges, implications and opportunities for PA management and governance, and for tourism development at local and global levels (and their interactions), are discussed in follow-up papers to this review, including research priority areas, the measurement of tourism numbers, economic impact modelling, private PAs, the changing roles of zoning, the need for flexible, inclusive and accountable governance structures, and for better understanding of tourist behavioural change mechanisms.     

Technology development mode: a transaction cost conceptualization

Technology alliances have emerged in the past decade as a significant mode for the development of innovation. The present research assesses the factors explaining whether firms will engage in such technology alliances or utilize the more traditional mode of internal R&D. The hypotheses stem from a transaction cost conceptualization. Results suggest that firms which pursue technology alliances are likely to have less commitment to product category-specific assets, to face higher technological uncertainty, to be more capable at measuring innovation performance, to have more successful technology alliance experiences, and to compete in lower growth product categories. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Short selling,unwinding, and mispricing

This article highlights the impact of short selling restrictions and early unwinding opportunities on the relation between futures and spot prices. Within a multiperiod equilibrium model, the influence of optimal arbitrage trading on the mispricing is analyzed. Results concerning trade volume and level, mean reversion, and path dependence of the mispricing are provided. The empirical evidence suggests that short selling restrictions and early unwinding opportunities are influential factors for the mispricing behavior. They help explain empirical findings reported in the literature. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 18:903–923, 1998     

A bootstrap-based comparison of portfolio insurance strategies

This study presents a systematic comparison of portfolio insurance strategies. We implement a bootstrap-based hypothesis test to assess statistical significance of the differences in a variety of downside-oriented risk and performance measures for pairs of portfolio insurance strategies. Our comparison of different strategies considers the following distinguishing characteristics: static versus dynamic protection; initial wealth versus cumulated wealth protection; model-based versus model-free protection; and strong floor compliance versus probabilistic floor compliance. Our results indicate that the classical portfolio insurance strategies synthetic put and constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) provide superior downside protection compared to a simple stop-loss trading rule and also exhibit a higher risk-adjusted performance in many cases (dependent on the applied performance measure). Analyzing recently developed strategies, neither the TIPP strategy (as an ‘improved’ CPPI strategy) nor the dynamic VaR-strategy provides significant improvements over the more traditional portfolio insurance strategies.     

Europas künftige Rentenkluft

There is a significant variation in demographic development among European Union (EU) member states. Using the UN’s Population Prospects, we examine how different retirement ages in selected EU countries would lead to comparable relations between the working-age population and pensioners in the future. In the coming decades, it seems that the French would be able to take retirement roughly four years earlier than Germans. There is, therefore, no apparent economic justification for the suggested alignment of retirement ages in accordance with the current German regulation, as is sometimes suggested. Even the EU Commission has prioritised life expectancy in its recommendations for greater sustainability in the pension system, despite the fact that it is an insufficient indicator.     

Stakeholders perception of attitudes towards major landscape changes held by the public: The case of greenhouse clusters in Flanders

The intensification of greenhouse horticulture is a notable trend in many regions around the world. This intensification causes the grouping of large-scale greenhouses on a single site, into so-called ‘greenhouse clusters’. The main incentive for clustering is the reduction of production costs by sharing infrastructure such as energy, water and gas facilities. Despite these advantages, the public remains sceptic towards greenhouse clusters and resistance in Flanders is frequent and often fierce. The objective of this research is to obtain insight into the reasons, underlying motives and processes that steer this resistance as they are perceived by the agricultural sector. A grounded theory approach resulted in a comprehensive scheme that visualizes the public resistance towards greenhouse clusters as perceived by stakeholders in the agricultural sector, and as such the scheme includes factors that are probably also seen as key factors for the resistance among the stakeholders. Our research shows that the protest actions are complex and cannot be attributed to a single concept such as the NIMBY-concept that is still often put forward by politicians, planners and investors.     

Potential Conflict and Inefficiencies Arising in Agri‐environmental Management

We characterise the welfare implications of uncoordinated policy decisions in the presence of multiple externalities, illustrated with an aquifer. We concentrate on the problem of coordination that can occur when distinct agricultural and water authorities implement their respective policies (to optimise food production and groundwater use) with environmental concerns in mind. We represent this problem as an open‐loop Nash game, which compares the game‐theoretical solution to a centrally planned solution. We show that the inefficiencies arise from differences in the account taken of relevant costs by different authorities. We demonstrate that the magnitude of the inefficiency generated by the absence of coordination of our authorities varies depending on the weights put on environmental benefits by each authority, and discuss the implications of analysis for future research and policy.     

Tournaments in Mutual-Fund Families

We examine intrafirm competition in the mutual-fund industry.We test the hypothesis that fund managers within mutual-fundfamilies compete with each other in a tournament. Our empiricalstudy of the US equity mutual-fund market shows that they adjustthe risk they take depending on the relative position withintheir fund family. The direction of the adjustment depends onthe competitive situation in that family. Risk adjustments areparticularly pronounced among managers of funds with high expenseratios, which are managed by a single manager and which belongto large families.