What Are the Characteristics That Software Development Project Team Members Associate With a Good Project Manager?

In this study we investigate what software development project team members consider to be a good project manager. Previous research has been carried out using project manager self‐assessments, other project stakeholder views, or recruiters’ views. This qualitative study used the repertory grid technique to identify the characteristics that project team members associate with a good project manager. This technique has been adopted because of its strength in eliciting personal constructs. Among the 18 characteristics identified, the seven most relevant were classified and compared with previous findings, which reveals differences between the team members’ and project managers’ and other stakeholders’ perceptions. Those findings complement the existing skill set and could be considered when recruiting and training project managers and staffing projects.     

Building from Scratch: New Cities,Privatized Urbanism and the Spatial Restructuring of Johannesburg after Apartheid

By the start of the twenty‐first century, the once dominant historical downtown core of Johannesburg had lost its privileged status as the center of business and commercial activities, the metropolitan landscape having been restructured into an assemblage of sprawling, rival edge cities. Real estate developers have recently unveiled ambitious plans to build two completely new cities from scratch: Waterfall City and Lanseria Airport City (formerly called Cradle City) are master‐planned, holistically designed ‘satellite cities’ built on vacant land. While incorporating features found in earlier city‐building efforts, these two new self‐contained, privately‐managed cities operate outside the administrative reach of public authority and thus exemplify the global trend toward privatized urbanism. Waterfall City, located on land that has been owned by the same extended family for nearly 100 years, is spearheaded by a single corporate entity. Lanseria Airport City/Cradle City is a planned ‘aerotropolis’ surrounding the existing Lanseria airport at the northwest corner of the Johannesburg metropole. These two new private cities differ from earlier large‐scale urban projects because everything from basic infrastructure (including utilities, sewerage, and the installation and maintenance of roadways), landscaping, security services, the regulation of common spaces, and selling and branding the city are firmly in the hands of private profit‐making corporate entities and outside the mandate of public authorities.     

Credibility lost: attempting to reclaim an expert identity in an HR professional context

Professional insecurity is a long‐standing concern within HR, with claims to expertise seen as critical to credibility. Considering HR as an epistemic community and drawing on the identity work literature, we examine an identity threat to, and subsequent response by, a training and development (T&D) team. Based on ethnographic exposure to their practice, we explore how team members experience the threat and follow their attempts to re‐establish their position in the local epistemic community, the HR department. We examine both individual and collective identity work, considering how both the identity threat and subsequent responses are embedded within T&D and HR practice more broadly. Through this analysis, we offer academic insight on the nature of HR practice and the construction of claims to expertise.     

Networks of injustice and worker mobilisation at Walmart

This article investigates the use of Internet networks during the recent mobilisation of Californian Walmart workers. The findings of this case study suggest that Internet‐based mass self‐communication networks (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) can complement traditional organising techniques. Mass self‐communication networks ameliorate many of the weaknesses identified by previous studies of Internet networks. In particular, these types of networks can help overcome negative dispositions towards unions, increase the density of communication and the level of participation among members, create a collective identity congruent with trade unionism, facilitate organisation and spread ‘swarming actions’ which are effective at leveraging symbolic power. Moreover, unions may be well suited to providing crucial strategic oversight and coordination to wider worker networks.     

Trading Partners and Trading Volumes: Implementing the Helpman–Melitz–Rubinstein Model Empirically

Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein [Quarterly Journal of Economics (2008) Vol. 123, pp. 441–487] (HMR) present a rich theoretical model to study the determinants of bilateral trade flows across countries. The model is then empirically implemented through a two‐stage estimation procedure. We argue that this estimation procedure is only valid under the strong distributional assumptions maintained in the article. Statistical tests using the HMR sample, however, clearly reject such assumptions. Moreover, we perform numerical experiments which show that the HMR two‐stage estimator is very sensitive to departures from the assumption of homoskedasticity. These findings cast doubts on any inference drawn from the empirical implementation of the HMR model.     

<Emphasis Type="BoldItalic">Mad Money</Emphasis> stock recommendations: market reaction and performance

We examine the stock recommendations of Jim Cramer televised on CNBC’s Mad Money, and document significant market reactions (i.e., announcement returns and volume) to Cramer’s recommendations, particularly for small capitalization stocks. The following findings indicate that the announcement returns are primarily due to price pressure from uninformed trading as opposed to the recommendations providing new value related information: announcement returns reverse following buy recommendations; bid-ask spreads temporarily decline; and there is no evidence of positive longer-term abnormal returns. One implication, when considered in combination with other works, is that investors should be cautious in following stock recommendations announced in the mass-media.     

Bayesian estimation and prediction based on Rayleigh sample quantiles

Ordered data arise naturally in many fields of statistical practice. Often some sample values are unknown or disregarded due to various reasons. On the basis of some sample quantiles from the Rayleigh distribution, the problems of estimating the Rayleigh parameter, hazard rate and reliability function, and predicting future observations are addressed using a Bayesian perspective. The construction of β-content and β-expectation Bayes tolerance limits is also tackled. Under squared-error loss, Bayes estimators and predictors are deduced analytically. Exact tolerance limits are derived by solving simple nonlinear equations. Highest posterior density estimators and credibility intervals, as well as Bayes estimators and predictors under linear loss, can easily be computed iteratively.     

Generalization practices in qualitative research: a mixed methods case study

The purpose of this mixed methods case study was to examine the generalization practices in qualitative research published in a reputable qualitative journal. In order to accomplish this, all qualitative research articles published in Qualitative Report since its inception in 1990 (n =  273) were examined. A quantitative analysis of the all 125 empirical qualitative research articles revealed that a significant proportion (i.e., 29.6%) of studies involved generalizations beyond the underlying sample that were made inappropriately by the author(s). A qualitative analysis identified the types of over-generalizations that occurred, which included making general recommendations for future practice and providing general policy implications based only on a few cases. Thus, a significant proportion of articles published in Qualitative Report lack what we call interpretive consistency.     

Supplier innovativeness, organizational learning styles and manufacturer performance: An empirical assessment

Suppliers have become an increasingly important source of product and process innovation. While case studies have documented how supplier innovation can benefit a manufacturer, this relationship has not been empirically validated, nor have contingencies been explored. Using organizational learning theory we posit that the link between supplier innovativeness and manufacturer performance is moderated by the “fit” between the learning styles of the manufacturer and supplier. We empirically test our hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling of survey responses from 148 manufacturers concerning 592 suppliers. Results indicate that supplier innovativeness has positive impacts on multiple dimensions of manufacturer performance. Results show that when the outsourced activity involves low levels of design responsibility by the supplier, it is more beneficial for the two partners to have contrasting learning styles. However, when the outsourced activity is design-intensive, it is more beneficial to have a supplier with an explorative learning style.