Locating leisure as the route to well-being: challenges of researching women’s leisure in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the relation of leisure to subjective well-being by focusing on the language-based challenges during empirical research, which deeply impact upon both the substance of the data collected and its interpretation, thereby the knowledge that is produced on leisure. Drawing upon the empirical data collected via qualitative methods, the article seizes on the relationship between women’s free-time, labour, leisure and subjective well-being. The findings of the research suggest that the translation of leisure as ‘free time activities’ in Turkish creates serious challenges in researching women’s leisure. Women in this research understand leisure in multiple ways, such as an escape from boredom, a sphere of recuperation, pleasure and self-fulfilment which altogether represent their understanding of leisure as a route to their subjective well-being. Building on these findings, the article aims to highlight the importance of ethnographically guided qualitative research in uncovering both the meanings of and the interdependence between leisure and subjective well-being in both Turkey, the focus of the study, and other comparable societies around the world.     

Team Climate,Team Cognition,Team Intuition,and Software Quality: The Moderating Role of Project Complexity

Teams represent a prevailing approach to getting work done in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Although there is a widely held assumption that team-related capabilities determine the success of new product development projects, empirical research on team capabilities is scant. Based on the resource-based view of the firm, organizational learning theory, and situated learning theory, this study investigates the interrelationships among team climate, two information-processing capabilities (i.e., team cognition and team intuition), and software quality. As well, this study explores the moderating effect of project complexity between the information-processing capabilities and the quality of the software. In studying the data from 139 software development projects using the partial least squares structural equation modeling methods, we found that team climate has a direct influence on team cognition. Moreover, the findings showed that team cognition was positively related to the quality of the software product in general; in particular, this relationship was found to be far more significant when project complexity was used as a moderator. This finding indicates that the software development team’s ability to process information logically in order to interpret situations effectively allows the team to launch superior software products when unexpected and undesirable events make a project complicated and challenging to perform. In particular, managers should encourage teams to benefit from new ideas and make collective efforts for reaching goals. Managers should also enable teams to specialize in their tasks and improve their collective information-processing capabilities.     

Research on the Credit Cycle and Business Cycle with a Focus on Ten States from Central,Eastern, and Southeastern Europe

By performing an econometric analysis of the credit cycle and business cycle from an individual as well as a comparative perspective, with a focus on ten relevant economies from the areas of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, this research offers a fresh view regarding the importance of banks in promoting long-term economic growth through their lending capacity. The purpose is to better understand the behavior (the short- and medium-term dynamics) of the credit cycle and business cycle and the effects of the interactions between them. The results of this study offer valuable insights for both academics and policymakers and provide a warning to regulators not to overregulate or put too much pressure on banking activity.     

New Insights on US Aggregate and State Level Trade with the China Region

Aggregate trade data with breakdown into related and non‐related party components show that US multinational enterprises use different trading strategies in the China region relative to other countries. US trade with the China region in 2002–2007 is characterized by arm's‐length transactions. State‐level trade data show great variability in state engagement with the region through trade: exports to the region range from 1 to 28 percent of state exports. In addition, compared to exports to other countries, exports to the region are highly concentrated. At the extreme, for some states, 96–98 percent of exports to the region are computer and electronic products. Finally, gravity regressions show that state exports to Hong Kong are positively associated with the relative size of the Hong Kong‐born population in the states. There is no evidence that stricter labor regimes lead to lower state exports.     

东方食品:一颗璀璨的明珠

漳州市龙文区东方食品有限公司位于福建省漳州市蓝田工业开发区,占地面积60亩,紧靠324国道线,东距厦门经济特区50公里,南可直通汕头经济特区,交通极为便利。 公司创建于1995年(先后成立了南京分公司、上海分公司和福州办事处),现有员工600余人,具有较为雄厚的技术人员和管理人员队伍。     

贯彻落实新型工业化战略要求 打造汽车关键零部件龙头企业

一、企业基本情况 苏州市吴越塑料制品七厂,全资拥有苏州万隆汽车饰件有限公司及其技术中心.企业现有总资产9849万元,固定资产5521万元,职工580名,经营范围包括:制造、加工销售汽车用仪表台、保险杠、车门内饰板等汽车大中型内外饰件及大中型模具;家用电器塑料制品及塑料模具,具备进出口自营权.     

Risk and performance estimation in hedge funds revisited: Evidence from errors in variables

This paper revisits the performance of hedge funds in the presence of errors in variables. To reduce the bias induced by measurement error, we introduce an estimator based on cross sample moments of orders three and four. This Higher Moment Estimation (HME) technique has significant consequences on the measure of factor loadings and the estimation of abnormal performance. Large changes in alphas can be attributed to measurement errors at the level of explanatory variables, while we emphasize some shifts in the economic contents of the equity risk premiums by switching from OLS to HME.     

“水文化”的无穷之力

福建省水口发电有限公司,作为以水力发电为主的国家特大型企业,在继承和发扬福建电力人优秀品质的基础上,逐渐形成“滴水穿石,奔流不息”的共同志向,建立了完整的以“水”为载体的企业文化理念体系。精神体现“滴水穿石,奔流不息”企业精神体现在四个方面:一是坚韧执着,锲而不舍。水口发电公司在建设发展期间,面对一个接一个的“硬骨头”,表现出的是水一样的睿智和大海一样的胸怀,沉着应对、勇谋相济,创造了堪称我国水电建设典范的“水口模式”,取得了一个又一个里程碑式的胜利。这特有的坚韧执着,映衬出水看似柔弱,然而它却能穿山透石、无…     

国际信用评级体系改革与中国评级业发展展望

国际金融危机和欧洲主权债务危机的爆发,凸显出现行国际信用评级体系存在的种种弊端。该文指出,现行国际信用评级体系的根本缺陷在于高度垄断,为此应通过加强内部治理和外部监管推动现有评级行业的改革,并推动国际信用评级行业新秩序的建立。中国应从宏观政策层面出台措施,扶持和推动本国自主信用评级体系的做大做强,并参与到国际信用评级体系的重建中。