Social Capital and Consumer Value Co-Created Within an Online Health Community

Many health providers sponsor online communities that enable health consumers to connect and share experiences. This qualitative study draws upon both social capital and consumer behavior theories to demonstrate that consumers participating in the creation of social capital co-create value for themselves and each other. This netnographic study contributes and operationalizes theoretical frameworks for identifying social capital and consumer value within online communities. Results identify 14 social-capital-building practices and further reveal that these practices represent two distinct themes: practices that create a caring environment and practices that assist others. Findings indicate that members of online health communities gain affective, functional, social, and rational benefits such as empathy, self-esteem, status, connectedness, and efficiency. As a managerial and practical contribution, this study establishes online communities as an important component of patients’ healthcare networks not only for exchanging information and support but also as settings for accessing social capital.     

Entrepreneurship education in hospitality and tourism: insights from entrepreneurs

The perceptions of entrepreneurs in businesses related to hospitality and tourism in a rural community were explored through interviews to better understand their backgrounds, experiences, and insights into education for future entrepreneurs. The data were analyzed for themes and the findings provided ideas for entrepreneurship education in hospitality and tourism and indicated that further attention could be given toward helping students to develop creativity and critical thinking skills, engage in deeper self-discovery experiences, and understand tourism more fully to help prepare them for entrepreneurial roles.     

Two executives, one career

For six years, Cynthia Cunningham and Shelley Murray shared an executive job at Fleet Bank. One desk, one chair, one computer, one telephone, and one voice-mail account. To their clients and colleagues, they were effectively one person, though one person with the strengths and ideas of two, seamlessly handing projects back and forth. Although their department was dissolved after the bank merged with Bank of America, the two continue to consider themselves a package-they have one resume, and they are seeking their next opportunity together. Their choice to share a job was not only a quality-of-life decision but one intended to keep their careers on course: "Taking two separate part-time jobs would have thrown us completely off track" they write in this first-person account."We're both ambitious people, and neither of us wanted just a job. We wanted careers" In this article, the two highly motivated women reveal their determination to manage the demands of both family and career. Flextime,telecommuting, and compressed workweeks are just some of the options open to executives seeking greater work/ life balance, and the job share, as described by Cunningham and Murray, could well be the next solution for those wishing to avoid major trade-offs between their personal and professional lives. Cunningham and Murray describe in vivid detail how they structured their unusual arrangement, how they sold themselves to management, and the hurdles they faced along the way. Theirs is a win-win story, for the company and for them.     

Growth and improverishment in the middle of the nineteenth century

This paper applies the techniques for the development of ‘soft’ data to gain insight into the historical impacts of economic change on the structure and extent of poverty in the early stages of commercialization and industrialization. A typology of the structure of poverty is constructed for 1850 for 24 countries and the nine types which emerge are ranked partially by the probable extent of extreme poverty. The nature and ranking of the types are then used to develop hypotheses regarding the historical processes generating poverty. The paper focuses on the poorest stratum of society in countries of widely different levels of development. The study suggests that the phenomena generating poverty in 1850 were surprisingly similar to those operating in today's developing countries.     

Fiscal policy and economic growth: some evidence from China

Review of World Economics - China has experienced profound economic and social changes in recent decades. During this period, China’s fiscal policy framework has been substantially reformed....     

Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem,Psychological Contract Fulfillment,and Perceived Employment Opportunities: A Test of Self‐Regulatory Theory

This study addresses organization‐based self‐esteem (OBSE) development by examining the role of perceptions of employer psychological contract fulfillment, and the self‐regulatory processes by which OBSE evolves and produces its effects. Self‐regulatory theory helps reveal why psychological contract fulfillment relates to OBSE, how OBSE mediates its effects, and the ways in which OBSE might interact with perceived employment opportunities to affect job satisfaction, performance, and turnover intentions. The results show that OBSE is related to and mediates the relationships between relational contract fulfillment and employee job satisfaction and performance, but OBSE is not related to transactional contract fulfillment. Nor does OBSE mediate the relationships between transactional contract fulfillment and the dependent variables. Perceived employment opportunities moderate the relationships of OBSE with job satisfaction and turnover intentions. This study concludes with recommendations of ways managers can increase their sensitivity to the types of messages they communicate to employees. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Organizational Inducements and Employee Citizenship Behavior: The Mediating Role of Perceived Insider Status and the Moderating Role of Collectivism

The organizational inducement model proposed in this study seeks to examine the mediating role of perceived insider status (PIS) and the moderating role of vertical collectivism on the relationship between organizational inducements and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Among a sample of Chinese employees, the authors find that the organizational inducements of perceived supervisor support and participation led to higher levels of PIS, which in turn enhanced OCB. Furthermore, vertical collectivism moderated the relationship between PIS and OCB, such that their relationship grew stronger when collectivism was high. These findings have notable implications for theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does Voter Turnout Influence School Bond Elections?

This article investigates the role of voter turnout in school bond election outcomes. It is widely believed that turnout is negatively related to bond approval rates. Conclusions from previous empirical research, however, may be misleading because many sociodemographic factors and election parameters that influence bond support are also likely to influence voter turnout decisions. To account for the endogeneity of turnout, we employ an instrumental variable approach. We find that the persistent part of voter turnout plays a negligible role in explaining bond approval shares conditioned on election timing, past voting behavior, and district characteristics. Using first‐difference models, change in turnout has a negative and significant influence on change in approval share and probability of bond success. Our results support previous research and suggest that targeted voter mobilization strategies have the potential to influence school bond outcomes.