The impact of perceived environmental uncertainty and individual differences on management information requirements: A research note

In this study it is hypothesised that as perceived environmental uncertainty (PEU) increases, internals on the Locus of Control (LOC) scale will perceive information that has wider scope and is timely to be more useful than do externals on the LOC scale. Results indicate a significant effect but in a direction opposite to that expected. Externals, not internals, found information more useful when faced with higher uncertainty. It is suggested that the source rather than the relevance of the information, as was predicted, may have contributed to this result. The study is significant because it supports the need to consider personality and environmental factors together.     

Agricultural pricing policy in Kenya

This paper examines Kenya's agricultural pricing policy, its role in the development of key sectors of the agricultural economy during the 1970s and its impact on different classes of producers. Toward this end, the paper describes the process of agricultural price determination in Kenya, and examines trends in real producer price indices for selected crop groupings and by size of holding.The most important finding of the paper is that agricultural pricing policy has been used in Kenya to create incentives for the growth of marketed agricultural production. In addition, the paper shows that the Government of Kenya has also used pricing and marketing policy instruments to achieve its goal of promoting the agricultural development of smallholders, who constitute the dominant mode of agricultural production in Kenya. Significantly, these findings are contrary to the widely accepted notion that pricing policy in developing countries has uniformly been biased in favor of the urban sector and against agricultural producers.     

Residents’ opinions on gaming activities and the legalization of soccer betting

Many Asian countries have an active gaming industry yet limited published information about the industry's development, operation, impact, or resident opinions is available. The purposes of this study were to examine residents’ opinions on various forms of gaming and to identify factors influencing their support for legalized soccer betting. Telephone interviews were undertaken with 449 Hong Kong residents. Respondents’ opinions were divided on most gaming issues, including the recently announced authorization of soccer betting. Soccer betting's association with potential economic benefits was the strongest indicator of respondents’ support for its legalization. Soccer betting proponents were generally more supportive of all other forms of gaming activities.     

Community-based programmes to promote use of bicycle helmets in children aged 0-14 years: a systematic review

Hospital-based research has shown that wearing a helmet reduces the risk of head injury in bicycle riders. These studies have provided the impetus for community-wide interventions to increase the numbers of cyclists who wear helmets; however, the effectiveness of such programmes is undetermined. This study employs extensive search strategies to review the scientific literature to establish the effectiveness of community-wide programmes to increase helmet use among cyclists. Thirteen community-wide intervention studies using substantive methodologies were located in 16 published papers. The community-wide interventions include mandating helmet wearing, education campaigns, distribution of free or subsidized helmets or, more frequently, combinations of all of these methods of influence. All studies reported success in influencing helmet wearing across communities. However, none of the studies reveals enough detail of the mix or techniques employed in the interventions to replicate the interventions. While it is encouraging that all of the studies showed positive results, the way forward for further implementation of helmet wearing is for adequate documentation of successful interventions.     

The developing field of technology education: a review to look forward

This paper attempts to review the development of technology education over the last 20–25 years. The purpose is to reflect on how far the field has come and where it might go to, including what questions need to be considered in its ongoing development. The data for this paper draw on our work in developing The International Handbook of Research and Development in Technology Education (Jones and de Vries 2009). However, the paper is more than a summary of this work, instead representing a synthesis in its own right. The work was not undertaken to report solely on the collective achievement of a large number of people internationally, but rather to use this as a means for setting a sound foundation for future research, development and teaching in technology education. By considering the underlying philosophy, international development of curriculum, relationships of technology education with other subject areas, teaching, learning and assessment as well as teacher education, and educational research, we are able to scope past activities and present an agenda for moving forward in teaching, research and development.     

Surprises,sentiments, and the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates

Between 2005 and 2009, we document evident time-varying credit risk price discovery between the equity and credit default swap (CDS) markets for 174 US non-financial investment-grade firms. We test the economic significance of a simple portfolio strategy that utilizes fluctuation in CDS spreads as a trading signal to set stock positions, conditional on the CDS price discovery status of the reference entities. We show that a conditional portfolio strategy which updates the list of CDS-influenced firms over time, yields a substantively larger realized return net of transaction cost over the unconditional strategy. Furthermore, the conditional strategy’s Sharpe ratio outperforms a series of benchmark portfolios over the same trading period, including buy-and-hold, momentum and dividend yield strategies.     

Employee Voice,Supervisor Support,and Engagement: The Mediating Role of Trust

Developing employee engagement has been one of the major areas of interest in the field of human resource management (HRM), and research identifies the positive effect that engagement has on both employee and organizational performance. However, while research on engagement has been substantial, there have been limited studies on key variables such as supervisor support, voice, and trust. We examined the role of supervisor support and direct voice on engagement experienced by nurses and the mediating role trust plays in those relationships. Data were collected though an online survey of 1,039 Australian nurses and analyzed using structural equation modeling. As hypothesized, results showed that both supervisor support and direct voice are positively associated with employee engagement, and these relationships are mediated by supervisory and senior management trust, respectively. The implications of the results for human resource (HR) practitioners are discussed and include the challenge of resourcing effective direct voice systems and enlisting the support of supervisors in order to impact on the engagement of nurses who are the “front line” of the health sector. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Results of the first survey of independent trust grantmaking: who is setting the agenda?

Based on an analysis of 2,300 grants made by a representative sample of independent trusts and foundations, ‘Patterns of Independent Grantmaking in the UK’ is the first national survey identifying where independent trusts allocate their funds. The results show that, as in mainstream central and local government expenditure, social care was a clear priority for independent grantmakers, not only attracting the highest proportion of grants overall, but also the single largest proportion of funding, £233m. This figure equals just over one‐third of local authority support for social services in the voluntary sector and indicates that the collective impact of independent funding to the sector is significant. Social care funding consisted mainly of a large number of small to medium‐sized grants. Health was the second largest area, followed by education and the arts. There was a considerable regional imbalance in funding. Given this fairly conservative pattern of funding, the question arises whether funders are led by applicants or vice versa? What is needed to introduce more change and risk into trust funding? Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

The performance edge: Strategic and value dissensus

The study discussed in this article deals with the effects of strategic and value consensus on the performance of management teams in operating units at a large multinational company. The results showed that diversity of views on objectives, competitive methods, and values are positively related to objective measures of performance but negatively related to manager's own perceptions of their operating units' performance. This suggests that diversity of views may allow managerial employees to fulfill their responsibilities more effectively by improving their units' performance. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in the concluding section of this article.