Workaholism versus work engagement and job crafting: What is the role of self‐management strategies?

Job crafting refers to the proactive actions employees take to redesign their jobs in order to get a better fit with their competencies, expectations, and wishes. So far, little is known about job crafting's underlying mechanisms. In this study, we examine how two different states of affective well‐being (workaholism and work engagement) relate to job crafting 3 months later and how these well‐being states steer different self‐management behaviours, which ultimately lead to job crafting. Structural equation modelling on a heterogeneous sample (N = 287) revealed that work engagement and workaholism both relate to expansive job crafting through different self‐management strategies. Work engagement relates to challenge and resource seeking via self‐goal setting and self‐observation strategies, whereas workaholism associates with challenge and resource seeking only through self‐goal setting. In addition, the results show a strong relationship between workaholism and self‐punishment. Altogether, the findings suggest that self‐management strategies can function as an explanatory mechanism for different job crafting behaviours.     

The ecological transparency of the information society

A de-linking of pollution from economic growth and de-materialisation can probably be seen as the most important single characteristic of sustainable development. With regard to this, ecological transparency means understanding all human activities, processes and patterns that have an impact on the potential for sustainable development. Closely linked with this is the idea that the ecological footprint of the information society should be concerned with the environmental implications of its generations, applications and the disposability of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper aims at developing scenarios, and a set of criteria, plus indicators as tools for identifying various environmental impacts inherent in the information society. Furthermore, it aims for the successful unification of the positive factors of the information society with ecologically sustainable development. It is concluded that policy plans for the information society would benefit from the enhanced level of ecological transparency the information society can provide, as presented via the indicators mentioned later in the text. Further, it is suggested that prerequisites should be created for evaluating the implications of the information society and for the application of related information society technologies. Such an approach could be labelled an Information Society Assessment.     

Unrecognized,concealed, or forgotten – the case of absent information in risk communication

There are differing and partially incompatible views about what kind of issues should be included into risk discussions and what kinds of risks should be emphasized and dealt with. While the emergence of new risks has been extensively studied, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles that the absence of information can play in risk debates. Potentially relevant information may be downplayed or omitted and less relevant overemphasized when actors with varying interests, knowledge bases, and risk frames interact. Multiple and cumulative environmental and health risks caused by chemicals and other stressors pose particular challenges for risk communication. We identify and discuss different forms of unrecognized, hidden, and forgotten information by using chemical risks as a case. A widely applicable typology of absent information in risk communication is outlined.     

The construction of persuasiveness of self-assessment-based post-completion auditing reports

In this study, we investigate how persuasiveness of self-assessment-based post-completion auditing (PCA) reports on capital investment is constructed. We examine what makes companies consider that information in these reports rises to an acceptable quality level. The investigation was motivated by extant agency theory (AT) informed literature suggesting that self-auditing will entail obvious risks for the quality of PCA reports in terms of data manipulation. We employed actor-network theory as our method theory. The empirical evidence of our case study came from 24 semi-structured interviews and the analysis of the construction of 22 PCA reports of strategic investments in one of the major European forest companies. We add to the capital budgeting literature by identifying and discussing the role of various conditions affecting the construction of persuasiveness of PCA reports. We maintain that the existence of three conditions (i.e. an appropriate collective process, alignment with relevant external/internal reference points, and following of formal guidance) can play a major role in facilitating the production of a persuasive PCA report. Additionally, the paper is able to make sense of the complex process of fabricating the persuasiveness of PCA reports, which would remain a black box when examined from the AT viewpoint only.     

Pricing of Futures Contracts on Coupon Bonds: Empirical Evidence from Finland

This paper investigates the pricing of the two year old Finnish bond futures market. We show that the market has mispriced the futures contracts during the test period with the futures contracts being underpriced most of the time. We also measure whether the futures market has prediction power over the bond market. Our results suggest that there is a lead-lag relationship between the Finnish bond and the futures markets.     

Where do the highly educated migrate? Micro-level evidence from finland

This paper analyses the role which migration of highly educated labour plays in human capital reallocation. The study focuses on actual migrants, examining the direct effect of educational attainment on destination choices. The paper uses the ordered probability model and a micro-level data set in econometric analyses. Individual level investigations of migrants show that highly educated migrants are likely to move to urban regions. As a result, the reallocation of highly educated labour, and thereby also the redistribution of human capital, seems to be taking place in Finland.     

Why did the League of Nations fail?

Why did the League of Nations ultimately fail to achieve widespread disarmament, its most fundamental goal? This article shows that the failure of the League of Nations had two important dimensions: (1) the failure to provide adequate security guarantees for its members (like an alliance); (2) the failure of this organization to achieve the disarmament goals it set out in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, it was doomed from the outset to fail, due to built-in institutional contradictions. It can also be modeled and analyzed as a potential military alliance. The results are fairly conclusive: The League of Nations did not function as a pure public-good alliance, which encouraged an arms race in the 1930s.     

Safety management challenges and tensions in the European nuclear power industry

This paper provides an analysis of major management challenges and tensions within the European nuclear power industry in the context of safety. The results show that human resource management, organisational climate and culture, and public confidence and trust are the three most challenging areas for nuclear managers across Europe. Managerial tensions typically relate to the setting of priorities and maintaining focus, and to the need to find a balance between diverging demands and expectations, such as perceived conflicts between economy- and safety-related objectives. Overall, the results suggest that nuclear managers need and use complex models for structuring their realities and that the safety of a nuclear power plant cannot be managed independently of the other goals of the plant organisation.     

The shadow rate as a predictor of real activity and inflation: evidence from a data-rich environment

This article examines the predictive content of the shadow rates for US real activity and inflation in a data-rich environment. We find that the shadow rates contain substantial out-of-sample predictive power for inflation in nonzero lower bound and zero lower bound periods. In contrast, the shadow rates are uninformative about future real activity.     

Weak signals analysis,knowledge management theory and systemic socio-cultural transitions

The theoretical goal of this article is to narrow the gap between existing knowledge management theories and theories of weak signal analysis, and partly wild card analysis. The following theories and associated theoretical frameworks are discussed in the article: (1) Environmental Scanning Model, (2) Nonaka's Knowledge Management Theory, (3) Gammelgaard's and Ritter's Knowledge Retrieval Matrix, (4) Boisot's Information Space Model and (5) Vejlgaard's Diamond Shaped Trend Model. These various and nevertheless complementary perspectives are important for the further development of weak signal analysis, knowledge management theory and knowledge management practices in modern organisations as well as for anticipation and decision-making in policy-making arenas. There are still many theoretical and empirical challenges in these fields of scientific knowledge. A general conclusion is that all these frameworks provide interesting new perspectives for modern futures studies as such. Another conclusion is that there are various knowledge management (KM) and scanning frameworks available for implementing weak signal analysis. However, this paper, its observations and conclusions also imply that a more generalised approach to weak signal analysis needs to be developed and that modern KM theories should be used when developing new futures studies/foresight methodologies. According to the theoretical guidelines presented in this article, it is possible to make the suggestion that it would be wise to integrate the latest developments in weak signal analysis into knowledge management theory and vice versa.