Integrating Results from Children's Television Advertising Research

Children's television advertising is rapidly becoming a major concern to government agencies, citizens' groups and researchers in many areas of the social sciences. To this point there has been little integration of research efforts. This article presents a model of the processing of television advertising by children in order to organize and integrate previous research results and to act as the basis for suggesting future directions for research. The authors indicate that more involvement by advertisers is needed.     

Geography, insolation, and vitamin D in nineteenth century US African-American and white statures

Using a new source of nineteenth century US state prison records I contrast the biological living conditions of comparable African-Americans and whites. Although blacks and whites today in the US reach similar terminal statures, nineteenth century African-American statures were consistently shorter than those of whites. Greater insolation (vitamin D production) is shown to be associated with taller black and white statures and a considerable share of the stature difference between US blacks and whites was attributable to insolation and vitamin D production. Black statures increased during the antebellum period, while white statures declined. Black and white statures both decreased after the Civil War. Farmers were taller than workers in other occupations, and an alternative explanation for stature variation by social class is considered.     

Imparting negative news to salespeople

Sales managers often are required to give negative information to their sales personnel. Perhaps the salespeople's territories will be reduced, their compensation or expense program decreased, or their positions realigned or eliminated. Although extensive research has examined delivering negative news to sales personnel, no empirical work has yet explored how that inimical information should be disseminated to sales subordinates. Scholars in organizational psychology argue that providing adverse news to employees using interpersonal sensitivity is advantageous for both the individual and the organization. To date, though, this issue has not been investigated in a selling context. Therefore, this article reports the results of an exploratory study that investigated factors that influence whether sales managers provide negative communication to salespeople in an interpersonally sensitive fashion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

An investigation into the relationship between training evaluation and the transfer of training

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between training evaluation and the transfer of training in organizations. We hypothesized that training evaluation frequency will be related to higher rates of transfer because evaluation information can identify weaknesses that lead to improvements in training programs and create greater accountability among stakeholders for training outcomes. The data were obtained from 150 training professionals who were members of a training and development association in Canada. The results indicated that training evaluation frequency is positively related to training transfer. However, among Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation criteria, only behavior and results criteria were related to higher rates of transfer of training, indicating that the level of evaluation criteria is important for training transfer. These results indicate the importance of organizational‐level initiatives such as training evaluation in addition to individual‐level practices for facilitating the transfer of training.     

START FILLING YOUR TALENT GAP-NOW

As businesses steer their way out of turbulence, they have a unique opportunity to identify their leadership supply and demand and then to close the talent gap in their organization. Alan Bird, Lori Flees and Paul DiPaola explain how you can take immediate steps to build the right team now – and lay the groundwork for a long-term approach for nurturing talent within the organization.     

Stuck on gold: Real exchange rate volatility and the rise and fall of the gold standard, 1875-1939

Did the gold standard diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. Hard regimes like the gold standard limit monetary shocks by tying policymakers' hands; but exchange-rate inflexibility compromises shock absorption in a world of real disturbances and nominal stickiness. A model shows how lack of flexibility affects the transmission of terms-of-trade shocks. Evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exposes a dramatic change. The classical gold standard did absorb shocks, but the interwar gold standard did not, supporting the view that the interwar gold standard was a poor regime choice.