Lend me your wallets: the effect of charismatic leadership on external support for an organization

We argue that charismatic leadership can influence external support for the organization, particularly in making the company more attractive to outside investors. Two studies were conducted to test this general hypothesis. First, an archival study demonstrated that the stock of companies headed by charismatic leaders appreciated more than the stock of comparable companies, even after differences in corporate performance were controlled. It was also found that the effect of charismatic leadership was heightened under more difficult economic conditions. Second, an experiment was conducted in which the salience of charismatic leadership was manipulated, along with information about the prospects for an organization's turnaround. Results showed that appeals from a charismatic leader led to increased investment in the firm, and the leader's influence was greater when the prospects for an organizational turnaround were more difficult. It was also found that an endowment of stock enhanced the influence of charismatic appeals and that charismatic leadership may have affected the general risk propensities of followers. These findings were interpreted in terms of an external perspective on leadership, illustrating how leaders can manage the firm's economic and social environment. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A play-the-winner-type urn design with reduced variability

We propose a new adaptive allocation rule, the drop-the-loser, that randomizes subjects in the course of a trial comparing treatments with dichotomous outcomes. The rule tends to assign more patients to better treatments with the same limiting proportion as the randomized play-the-winner rule. The new design has significantly less variable allocation proportion than the randomized play-the-winner rule. Decrease in variability translates into a gain in statistical power. For some values of success probabilities the drop-the-loser rule has a double advantage over conventional equal allocation in that it has better power and assigns more subjects to the better treatment. Acknowledgments. I thank Stephen Durham, the associate editor, and the referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Self‐help in housing and chengzhongcun in China's urbanization

This article focuses on the housing issues of rural migrants arising from urbanization, with particular reference to chengzhongcun, a topic with considerable impact on policymaking. An attempt is made to understand the underlying rationale of self‐help in housing and the important role of chengzhongcun in sheltering rural migrants in the context of China's rural‐urban dichotomy. As demonstrated in this study, chengzhongcun accommodate, with little in the way of government resources and assistance, millions of rural migrants because of their social accessibility and affordability. While not denying their social problems, we argue that chengzhongcun in fact act as an innovative and positive agent to promote urbanization in present day China by housing massive numbers of rural migrants and assimilating them into cities. Current government policies towards chengzhongcun have generated a wide range of interest conflicts and confrontations. The consequences of such conflicts show that the government policies were problematic and unworkable, as they violated basic market principles as well as citizen rights. Policy strategy towards the redevelopment of chengzhongcun must acknowledge their credibility in the Chinese road to urbanization and requires more thoughtful and prudent consideration of migrants' demands for affordable housing.     

Effect Sizes in Qualitative Research: A Prolegomenon

The American Psychological Association Task Force recommended that researchers always report and interpret effect sizes for quantitative data. However, no such recommendation was made for qualitative data. Thus, the first objective of the present paper is to provide a rationale for reporting and interpreting effect sizes in qualitative research. Arguments are presented that effect sizes enhance the process of verstehen/hermeneutics advocated by interpretive researchers. The second objective of this paper is to provide a typology of effect sizes in qualitative research. Examples are given illustrating various applications of effect sizes. For instance, when conducting typological analyses, qualitative analysts only identify emergent themes; yet, these themes can be quantitized to ascertain the hierarchical structure of emergent themes. The final objective is to illustrate how inferential statistics can be utilized in qualitative data analyses. This can be accomplished by treating words arising from individuals, or observations emerging from a particular setting, as sample units of data that represent the total number of words/observations existing from that sample member/context. Heuristic examples are provided to demonstrate how inferential statistics can be used to provide more complex levels of verstehen than is presently undertaken in qualitative research.     

The Performance of Service Industries in Canada: A Real Value Analysis

The performance of service industries in Canada has been lower than that of good industries over the last four decades, with noticeable exceptions such as for railways and telecommunication carriers. Service industries were less economically (and technically) efficient in that they generated less output value (quantity) per hour worked (level and growth) or per combined unit of labour and capital (multifactor productivity growth) than good industries. The relative output price of services declined slightly over time compared with goods. At the disaggregated level, changing relative output prices were substantial and proved to be an important factor explaining the relative satisfactory economic performance of many service industries despite their low technical performance. Nevertheless, the output share of service industries increased over that period, sustained, mainly, by the growing recourse of all firms to outsourcing of services.