Fathers' involvement in household activities

This paper reports a study which examined the extent of the father's involvement in child rearing and traditionally female household work. The quality of life perceived by the husband, wife and oldest child in each family in the sample was assessed.     

The Efficacy of Third‐Party Consultation in Preventing Managerial Escalation of Commitment: The Role of Mental Representations*

Avoiding continued investment in poorly performing projects is an important function of management control systems. However, prior research suggests that managers fail to use accounting information indicating that a project is performing poorly to discontinue it; that is, they escalate commitment to the project. We perform two experiments to investigate the efficacy of a potential control mechanism, third‐party consultation, in preventing managerial escalation of commitment. We hypothesize that the information‐processing objective (that is, purpose) assigned to consultants influences the mental representations they construct to process and store information, which ultimately influences their recommendations regarding the continuation of a poorly performing project. Results suggest that consultants will not construct mental representations amenable to making high‐quality project‐continuation recommendations unless they are assigned that specific purpose. Results further suggest that applying additional effort likely will not overcome the adverse effects of having inappropriate mental representations when making project‐continuation recommendations. An implication of our study is that third‐party consultants likely will not prevent managerial escalation of commitment unless consultants have a specific mandate of making a project‐continuation recommendation in mind when they encounter relevant accounting information.     

Boy/girl differences in household work

Ordinary least squares multiple regression was used to model time spent in household work by children, aged 6–19, in 2,100 two-parent, two-child households in 11 states. First-born boys and girls and second-born boys and girls were analysed separately. Whether the data were collected on a schoolday was not significant in predicting all children's time in household work. Own age in both linear and quadratic forms was significant in explaining time of first-born boys and second-born girls, while living in a rural area was significant for second-born girls only. First-born boys were found to contribute significantly less time to household work than first-born girls.     

Early Exercise of Put Options on Stocks

U.S. exchange‐traded stock options are exercisable before expiration. While put options should frequently be exercised early to earn interest, they are not. In this paper, we derive an early exercise decision rule and then examine actual exercise behavior during the period January 1996 through September 2008. We find that more than 3.96 million puts that should have been exercised early remain unexercised, representing over 3.7% of all outstanding puts. We also find that failure to exercise cost put option holders $1.9 billion in forgone interest income and that this interest is systematically captured by market makers and proprietary firms.     

Household production: beyond the economic perspective

The effects on the family of an environment which places high value on economic productivity are considered. The paper emphasizes the importance of the social productivity of families, the management processes which contribute to improvements in economic and social productivity, and the importance of maintaining the social-psychological perspective in family economics. The discussion outlines the resource and value contexts in which household production and its resulting family productivity are evaluated, the various dimensions of family productivity, and the integrative management processes which mobilize resources for conscious achievement of desired quality of life. Social productivity differs from economic productivity in its emphasis on the development of human resources attributes, effectiveness rather than efficiency, process more than product, quality more than quantity, and group rather than individual orientation. The innovative, creative problem-solving process is contrasted to the economic decision process by application to the role and value conflict situations and divergent problems in families. The importance of going beyond the economic perspective of household production in understanding family productivity is essential for scholars of the family.     

IMPLEMENTING A PROFESSIONAL ON-CAMPUS WORK EXPERIENCE FOR CLOTHING AND TEXTILE STUDENTS

A Clothing and Textile course is described which provided a transition from classroom education to the world of work, improved students’ interpersonal skills and assisted in helping women students establish identities as professional people. In addition, the experience described demonstrates how concepts and skills from a large number of other courses are integrated when a specific real-life clothing problem must be solved. Through an on-campus experience, twenty-eight jackets for the Washington State University Men's Ski Team were designed and produced. Students were organized into a design team and a management team. The design team designed the jacket to meet the requirements of the ski team, made the the patterns, fitted the basic shells, reworked the pattern, wrote the assembly instructions and determined the most efficient layout. The management team investigated and purchased the materials and equipment needed, including a Babylock serger, determined jacket cost, organized and conducted meetings with the clients, and wrote the contract. All students participated in the construction of the jackets, a process organized as a factory assembly line. Students were enthusiastic about this practical opportunity to apply design and management principles and the chance to work with others towards a common goal. The approach used with this class is applicable to numerous functional clothing design problems.     

The effects of environmental attitude and fashion opinion leadership on textile recycling in the US

This study explored consumers' use of existing textile recycling options and tested relationships between general environmental attitudes, fashion opinion leadership and textile recycling behaviour. Nearly 51·2% of consumer textile products end up in landfills each year. Therefore, recycling of post-consumer textiles has implications for reducing the impact of consumer waste on the environment. The sample comprised a total of 277 male and female students from one Mid-western university. Factor analysis, correlation analysis and t-tests were the statistical methods used to analyse the data. Environmental attitude was found to be positively related to textile disposition method but not related to fashion opinion leadership. Gender differences were found for general environmental attitude as well as textile disposition method. These results have implications for consumer textile recycling initiatives. Suggestions for further study are given.