Perception of organization's value support and perceived employability: insights from self-determination theory

Perceived employability (PE; i.e. the worker's perception about available job opportunities) is portrayed as the upcoming resource for workers and organizations. However, organizations might particularly want to stimulate perceptions of job opportunities on the internal labor market (i.e. internal PE). In contrast, they may be hesitant in stimulating perceptions of job opportunities on the external labor market (i.e. external PE), as this might foster workers' voluntary turnover. The contextual influences adding to these different types of PE are relatively unknown. Building upon self-determination theory, we argue that the organization's support of intrinsic (e.g. personal growth) and extrinsic (e.g. status) values may play a critical role. In line with expectations, the results reveal a positive association of the perceived organization's support of intrinsic work values and a negative association of the perceived extrinsic value support with internal PE, both in terms of a similar job (i.e. internal lateral PE) and a better job (i.e. internal upward PE). Unexpectedly, perceived organization's support of extrinsic values did not relate negatively to external PE. These results show that employers can invest in the workers' employability without disadvantaging the organization. To arrive at a flexible workforce, the support of intrinsic values is of key importance.     

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION WITH DOWNSIDE CONSTRAINTS

We consider the portfolio optimization problem for an investor whose consumption rate process and terminal wealth are subject to downside constraints. In the standard financial market model that consists of d risky assets and one riskless asset, we assume that the riskless asset earns a constant instantaneous rate of interest,   r > 0  , and that the risky assets are geometric Brownian motions. The optimal portfolio policy for a wide scale of utility functions is derived explicitly. The gradient operator and the Clark–Ocone formula in Malliavin calculus are used in the derivation of this policy. We show how Malliavin calculus approach can help us get around certain difficulties that arise in using the classical "delta hedging" approach.     

Pharmaceutical new product development: why do clinical trials fail?

A high percentage of new drug candidates fail to reach the market during clinical trials, and these failures imply massive financial losses for the pharmaceutical companies. Clinical trials have distinctive characteristics and additional complexity compared with the late stages of product development in many other industrial sectors. Although the current literature on clinical trial has offered explanations for why a drug is abandoned during clinical trials (e.g., toxicity, lack of efficacy, and economics), studies investigating non‐drug‐related causes of failure are scarce. New product development (NPD) failures also differ from one another; however, no comprehensive conceptual framework in the NPD literature describes how to classify failures. This study suggests a conceptual framework for explaining NPD failures in the pharmaceutical industry by drawing on clinical trial literature combined with an exploratory empirical approach based on 17 interviews with industry experts. The initial interviews were used to identify managerial issues related to clinical trial failure, and the later interviews had a more iterative character to validate the issues identified in the previous round. We identified seven critical management issues causing failures in clinical trials. Our findings indicate that chaotic and slow patient recruitment, lack of experience in choosing and monitoring partners, lack of feasibility of the study protocol, low quality of the registered data, too high incidence of serious adverse events and severe incidents, unmanageable level of portfolio complexity, and incorrect assessment of the market potential or returns cause the failure of clinical trials. The conceptual framework for failures proposed in this paper combines project and product failures while acknowledging relevant specificities in clinical trials. Clinical trial managers are also supported in their decision making in clinical trials with an identified list of critical management issues that require attention to reducing the chance of failure. This study provides a basis for future empirical testing, including measuring interdependencies among the critical management issues and their adequacy for predicting failure.     

Care und Case Management in Big Apple

So funktioniert das Konzept in den USA - über vierzig Jahre Erfahrung hat man mittlerweile in Amerika mit dem Handlungskonzept des Care und Case Managements, das dort auch seinen Ursprung hat. Grund genug für Studierende der Alice Salomon Hochschule in Berlin, ihr Wissen zu vertiefen und sich die Umsetzung vor Ort, in New York City, genau anzusehen.     

Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises and Sustainability: Managers' Values and Engagement with Environmental and Climate Change Issues

This article reports on an in‐depth, qualitative study into the pro‐environmental engagement of small businesses in the east of England, with respect to climate change in particular. Managers of environmentally pro‐active small businesses were asked about the pro‐environmental measures they had implemented in their firms, their motivations for doing so, and their understanding of climate change. The managers in this study had a relatively good understanding of environmental issues in general and climate change in particular, and had implemented a range of pro‐environmental measures in their firms. Their understanding of climate change was a holistic one, which sat within their overall understanding of environmental and social issues. While economic arguments and external pressure played a role in their pro‐environmental engagement, perhaps the most notable motivation for managers in this study to engage with environmental and climate change issues was personal values and beliefs. Environmentally engaged managers exhibited an internal locus of control. Some of these findings contrast with the views of key informants in local government and business advice organisations, who tend to emphasise the business case and cost arguments when trying to encourage small businesses towards greater environmental engagement. These findings suggest that public policy and business advice in this area should perhaps focus more strongly on personal values and a sense of being able to contribute to environmental protection in their engagement with small businesses. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Technische Hilfsmittel im Alter

Sinnvolle Unterstützung oder bedürfnisferne Produktangebote? - Sie hei?en „Rhoni“, „Care-O-bot_?“ oder „Paro“ und sie sollen immer h?ufiger in der Pflege eingesetzt werden. Was heute noch die Ausnahme ist und teils amüsiert im pflegerischen Alltag ausprobiert wird, ist vielleicht morgen daraus schon nicht mehr wegzudenken. Welche technischen Konzepte zur altersgerechten Unterstützung existieren derzeit am Markt?     

Kapitalisierung von Paarbeziehungen

This study examines the role that the social networking site Facebook plays in the different aspects of relationship management by couples. The communication of couples is influenced not only by the relationship phase but also by the geographical distance between the partners. Based on the assumption that these factors are also important for the couple’s (partly) public Facebook communications, the online survey explores whether couples in the first phase of a relationship or in a long-distance relationship use Facebook intensively for relationship management. Furthermore, the concept of capitalization (Gable et al. (2004, 2006)) is applied to the social network communication. Originally, it referred to interpersonal communication. In conjunction with the publicity of social networks, the awareness of others could change the processes of capitalization. It can be shown that relationship management in a narrow (“romantic”) sense is upheld on a rather low level. Contrary to expectations, there is less (partly) public relationship communication in the first phase of a couple’s relationship as well as in long-distance relationships. Also contrary to a culturally pessimistic point of view, Facebook is not replacing traditional forms of relationship communication. Capitalization also has deficits; nonverbal forms of communication such as facial expressions, body language, and gestures are lacking on Facebook, despite all of its various emoticons.