Smartphone addiction: psychosocial correlates,risky attitudes,and smartphone harm

Smartphone use has brought convenience to users, although its excessive use and addiction might also have negative consequences. Using a representative sample of 526 smartphone users in Spain, the present study analyzes smartphone extensive use and addiction as well as its relationship to smartphone harm. Self-reported and scanned data were obtained from users and their smartphones. Multivariate linear regression analyses showed that higher levels of smartphone extensive use were found for female respondents, those high on general propensity to risk, neuroticism, and low on conscientiousness, openness, or social support. Multivariate binary logistic results showed that general propensity to risk and low social support were predictive of smartphone addiction. The combination of high smartphone extensive use and low social support was positively and significantly related to the existence of smartphone harm as well as higher levels of risk attitudes toward smartphone use. These results might indicate that when low social support is coupled with an extensive smartphone use, respondents not only show a more positive attitude toward risky behaviors while using their smartphone but, also, a greater level of harm is found in their terminals.     

Practical wisdom: A virtue for leaders. Bringing together Aquinas and Authentic Leadership

This article analyzes in detail the virtue of practical wisdom as described by Thomas Aquinas, and on this basis it develops a comprehensive framework to enrich Authentic Leadership theory, establishing the virtue of practical wisdom as foundational for the authentic leader’s behavior and character development, and highlighting shortfalls that may stem from vices opposed to it. The goal of the article is two-fold: First, it seeks to fill a void on the role of virtues–and in particular practical wisdom–in leadership studies; second, it aims to show how cultivating the virtue of practical wisdom as described by Aquinas promotes the development of exactly those traits that are characteristic of an authentic leader, offering a set of propositions delineating these correlations.     

Fundraising as organisational knowing in practice: Evidence from the arts and higher education in the UK

This paper argues for the centrality of organisational practices in occupational learning with a case study of fundraising in the non-profit UK's arts and higher education sectors. Despite the need to increase charitable giving to non-profit organisations, little is known about the work, fundraisers must do in order to carry out their jobs. We argue that fundraisers develop strategic understandings and competences within organisational environments, which they put into practice in their relationships with stakeholders within and outside the organisations where they work. Our findings suggest that one of the main ways in which fundraisers learn is by negotiating and surmounting obstacles both internally, within their organisational environments and externally, around the perception of fundraising as a profession. We thus argue for the importance of establishing a “fundraising culture” within organisational environments; a shared organisational competence where fundraising is practiced as a legitimate and strategic type of practice.     

The effect of science and technology parks on a firm’s performance: a dynamic approach over time

We argue that the benefits provided by locations inside science and technology parks evolve over time. Firms inside parks can improve performance due to certain advantages related to knowledge spillovers and shared resources that can be particularly useful in earlier stages of the industry life cycle. In these industries, local knowledge sharing is particularly useful because no standards are clearly established, as we have confirmed in a sample of 12,800 firms from the PITEC database, located either on- or off-park. We also find that young firms can benefit more from the park than more established businesses in terms of both business growth and innovative capacity. Although older firms have greater experience and investments that would increase their capacity to absorb external knowledge, their associated rigidities prevent them from incorporating changes into their structures.     

The effect of science and technology parks on firms’ performance: how can firms benefit most under economic downturns?

The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of the economic recession on the performance of firms located in science or technological parks. Compared to off-park firms, we propose that under an economic crisis park benefits are more noticeable, since firms located inside parks have less resource restraints and access to external sources of information and knowledge. Moreover, we observe that as firms invest on internal R&D, they tend to reinforce these park benefits. Empirical evidence gathered data on employment and sales from 2007 to 2012 for the group of firms which participated in the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel. The results confirm the positive role played by science and technology park locations under economic downturn environments, especially when firms investing in internal R&D.     

Irrational Exuberance, Entrepreneurial Finance and Public Policy

Unrealistic optimism is a well documented phenomenon. This paper argues that it is important in many economic contexts. Focusing on start-up finance for businesses, optimism may be responsible for or consistent with features such as credit rationing or redlining that are normally taken as symptoms of under-provision of finance requiring intervention to expand lending. Optimism leads to the opposite conclusion, at least if it is legitimate to use fiscal policy to counteract systematic error. The paper reports on an experiment in which, due to optimism, the lower the prizes to entrepreneurial activity the higher the subject's expected income.     

My computer is infected: the role of users’ sensation seeking and domain-specific risk perceptions and risk attitudes on computer harm

Literature has traditionally shown the potentially harmful consequences of risk-taking in a variety of domains. Less scholarly attention, however, has been directed to the study of risk-taking in the computer use domain. Using scanned data from 1902 computers, we sought to analyze the potentially harmful consequences that sensation-seeking and computer use risk perceptions and attitudes had on users’ computer vulnerability. Results of the study indicated that general sensation-seeking as well as computer use risk perceptions and risk attitudes were predictive of computer harm. The general measure of sensation-seeking was predictive of both risk perceptions and risk attitudes which in turn translated into the existence of malicious software in users’ computers.     

The performance implications of “grow or buy” decisions in the wine industry

This paper investigates how wineries’ decisions to grow or buy their provisions of grape affect their viticultural performance. While previous literature in agrarian economics suggests a direct association between vertical integration and performance, this research largely neglects the impact of transaction cost variables on governance mode choice and firm performance. This paper first demonstrates that neither outsourcing nor vertical integration per se result in superior performance; rather, a winery’s viticultural performance is contingent upon the alignment of winery’s governance decisions with the predictions of transaction cost theory.     

Food Grain Policies in India and their Implications for Stocks and Fiscal Costs: A Dynamic Partial Equilibrium Analysis

We analyse current and possible future reforms of the Indian food policies for the most important staple grains, wheat and rice, within a two‐commodity dynamic partial equilibrium model with stochastic shocks. The model is empirically grounded and reproduces past values well. It uses a new reduced‐form approach to capture private storage dynamics. We evaluate the implementation of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) under several policy measures with the current regime as well as two scenarios with a regime change – implementation of cash transfers and deficiency payments. Implications for market fundamentals and fiscal costs are simulated in the medium term – until 2020/21. The NFSA puts a high pressure on fiscal costs and public stocks. Relying on imports with low support prices results in low fiscal costs and stable, but higher domestic and international prices, and a high risk of zero stocks. A policy strategy to manipulate procurement prices in order to maintain public stocks close to the norms leads to slightly higher fiscal costs with lower, but more volatile prices. The highest domestic price volatility occurs under a strategy which uses export bans in order to maintain sufficient public stocks. A cash‐based regime can bring considerable savings and curb fiscal costs, particularly if targeted to the poor, and would leave sufficient stocks due to higher private stocks.