Assessing the impact of different workplace flexibilities on workplace stress in the presence of varying degrees of job control

We apply probit and propensity score matching to 1667 respondents from the 2008 National Survey of the Changing Workforce to quantify how workers’ self-reported stress levels vary under two different workplace flexibilities and varying degrees of job control. The first workplace flexibility considered is the ability to easily take time off for personal and family matters; the second is the option of a compressed work week. Our findings suggest that the first flexibility correlates with lower stress reports regardless of job control level. The second flexibility, however, correlates with lower stress levels only for workers with low levels of job control. This suggests that a compressed work week does not reduce stress for workers that already have high levels of job control. The more general conclusion is that some flexibilities are substitutes for job control whereas other are not, assuming the larger goal is the reduction of workplace stress and the various maladies exacerbated by stress.     

BOUNDARY EVOLUTION EQUATIONS FOR AMERICAN OPTIONS

We consider the problem of finding optimal exercise policies for American options, both under constant and stochastic volatility settings. Rather than work with the usual equations that characterize the price exclusively, we derive and use boundary evolution equations that characterize the evolution of the optimal exercise boundary. Using these boundary evolution equations we show how one can construct very efficient computational methods for pricing American options that avoid common sources of error. First, we detail a methodology for standard static grids and then describe an improvement that defines a grid that evolves dynamically while solving the problem. When integral representations are available, as in the Black–Scholes setting, we also describe a modified integral method that leverages on the representation to solve the boundary evolution equations. Finally we compare runtime and accuracy to other popular numerical methods. The ideas and methodology presented herein can easily be extended to other optimal stopping problems.     

Commentary on learning to talk like an (urban) woodsman: an artistic intervention

Rebekah Modrak's Learning to Talk like an (Urban) Woodsman: An Artistic Intervention project presents an artistic critique of the Best Made Co. lifestyle “axe” brand. The article and the Re Made Co. “plunger” art piece it describes engage directly with issues discussed by brand researchers and other scholars, such as the strategic use of appealing design and product aesthetics, the sign value of brands, and the creation of brand identity and cultural codes based upon the performance of an idealized, historicized and gendered mythology. The artwork itself, the reactions to the Re Made Co. project and the artist's reflections, all add to the interdisciplinary exploration of brands, brand culture and meaning.     

Echoes of Silence: Employee Silence as a Mediator Between Overall Justice and Employee Outcomes

Despite burgeoning interest in employee silence, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of (a) the antecedents of employee silence in organizations and (b) the implications of engaging in silence for employees. Using two experimental studies (Study 1a, N = 91; Study 1b, N = 152) and a field survey of full-time working adults (Study 2, N = 308), we examined overall justice as an antecedent of acquiescent (i.e., silence motivated by futility) and quiescent silence (i.e., silence motivated by fear of sanctions). Across the studies, results indicated that overall justice is a significant predictor of both types of silence in organizations. Furthermore, Study 2 indicated that the implications of silence extend beyond the restriction of information flow in organizations to include employee outcomes. Specifically, acquiescent silence partially or fully mediated the relationship between overall justice perceptions and emotional exhaustion, psychological withdrawal, physical withdrawal, and performance. Quiescent silence partially mediated these relationships, with the exception of performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for both the justice and silence literatures are discussed.     

Ethical Judgments: What Do We Know, Where Do We Go?

Investigations into ethical judgments generally seem fuzzy as to the relevant research domain. We first attempted to clarify the construct and determine domain parameters. This attempt required addressing difficulties associated with pinpointing relevant literature, most notably the varied nomenclature used to refer to ethical judgments (individual evaluations of actions’ ethicality). Given this variation in construct nomenclature and the difficulties it presented in identifying pertinent focal studies, we elected to focus on research that cited papers featuring prominent and often-used measures of ethical judgments (primarily, but not exclusively, the Multidimensional Ethics Scale). Our review of these studies indicated a preponderance of inferences and conclusions unwarranted by empirical evidence (likely attributable at least partly to inconsistent nomenclature). Moreover, ethical judgments related consistently to few respondent characteristics or any other variables, emergent relationships may not always be especially meaningful, and much research seems inclined to repetition of already verified findings. Although we concluded that knowledge about ethical judgments seems not to have advanced appreciably after decades of investigation, we suggested a possible path forward that focuses on the content of what is actually being judged as reflected in the myriad of vignettes used in the literature to elicit judgments.     

Perceptions of organizational context and job attitudes: The mediating effect of organizational identification

Informed by social exchange theory and social identity theory, we developed a conceptual model that examines the mediating role of organizational identification in the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational context and their job attitudes. In our model, the antecedents include perceived organizational support (POS), procedural justice, and perceived job insecurity. The outcome variables consist of affective organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and intentions to leave. Our respondents were 591 workers employed in three different firms in China. The results of regression analyses showed that employees’ job attitudes are affected by their perceptions of organizational context and organizational identification. Further, organizational identification was found to mediate the effects of POS on the outcome variables.     

Fragmentation and complementarity: The case of EFPs

With the proliferation of alternative markets, concerns have arisen that they may induce lower liquidity on centralized exchanges. In futures markets, the use of an alternative trading mechanism known as exchange of futures for physicals (EFPs) has increased sharply in recent years. EFPs provide a means to obtain futures positions, coupled with offsetting cash positions, away from the centralized exchange. Traders use EFPs to ensure a desired price on complex packages of trades, thus avoiding the transactional risk (slippage) that is inherent in the centralized market. Theoretical analysis establishes that any detrimental effects of fragmenting the centralized market can be offset by traders' knowledge of another opportunity to trade without transactional risk. If EFPs attract more risk‐bearing capacity, there could even be a net benefit to the central market. An empirical analysis suggests that EFP trading is motivated by transactional risk because it represents a larger portion of total trading during periods of unusually high volatility when slippage is apt to be more of a problem. Consistent with the notion that alternative markets can be complementary to centralized exchanges, we find that EFP trading is not associated with reductions in market quality and may act as an outlet for extra volume when markets are under the most stress. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:697–727, 2002