Lone star or team player? The interrelationship of different identification foci and the role of self‐presentation concerns

Work identity is important in the attraction and retention of staff, yet how the facets of such identity relate remains convoluted and unclear despite this being of interest to both scholars and practitioners. We use structural equation modeling to analyze empirical data from 144 employees in the United Kingdom's oil and gas industry, analyzing the nature and interrelationship of identification as individual‐level (career advancement) and social‐level (work group and organization) foci, as well as considering the two psychological self‐presentation factors (value expression and social adjustment) that direct and drive identification processes. A dichotomy between individual and social components of work identity is found, revealing a strong association between both social‐level foci of identification. Moreover, both components of work identity are found to be premised on different psychological factors, furthering our knowledge of the enmeshed nature of identity at work.     

Children as Economic Agents

A generational perspective recognizes that children have preferences which may differ systematically from those of adults, and, furthermore, that a children's standpoint should be recognized by scholars and activists and incorporated into policy targeted at children and their families. Economics has not considered children as agents because of their lack of power relative to adults. The implications of recognizing children's agency are explored for the case of children's paid and unpaid labor force and household work.     

Neither Mothers Nor Breadwinners: African-American Women's Exclusion From US Minimum Wage Policies, 1912-1938

We examine two key US labor market policies: state-level minimum wages for women from 1912-23 and the federal minimum wage established under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Each of these regulations implicitly defined which groups were and were not expected to conform to the hegemonic male breadwinner/female homemaker model of gender relations. In fact, social reformers and labor leaders advocated these policy measures as a means of extending the male-breadwinner family to recent European immigrants and white southerners. The male-breadwinner family and public policies designed to foster it became one means of defining a commonality of whiteness among different ethnic groups during a period of assimilation. Through the inclusion and exclusion of particular occupations and industries, African-American women were assigned a subordinated gender identity as neither full-time mothers nor legitimate breadwinners. They responded by forging their own gender identity as co-breadwinners.     

A pulse check on recent developments in time series econometrics

This article motivates and summarizes the contributions of the special issues on Recent Developments in Time Series Econometrics.     

New development: COVID-19 as an accelerator of digital transformation in public service delivery

ABSTRACT

In an unexpected circumstance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, public service delivery cannot be suspended, but must be delivered online, relying on the available digital technology. Social media, specifically, have been widely used to reach a broader portion of the population. This article discusses the digital acceleration that governments and organizations are now facing. The focus is on Italian state museums, which have been pushed for years to adopt digital tools to increase participation. This article highlights three main dilemmas in service delivery: user engagement; planning and control; and costs. The three dilemmas show the social and organizational challenges connected to digital transformation, underlining the issues that organizations will have to face in the future and not just in an emergency such as COVID-19.     

New development: The application of incomplete contract theory to documenting Social Impact Bonds

ABSTRACT

Nobel laureate Oliver Hart’s work in developing a theory of incomplete contracting is relevant to explaining the evolution of the pay for success contracts that undergird Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). By its very nature, a pay for success contract that supports a SIB is likely to be functionally incomplete in that it is unable to describe and differentiate in the initial contract all relevant future states of the world in which the contract is to operate. Navigating this incomplete world can be particularly challenging when it comes to government contracting for quality outcomes in social services. Accordingly, Hart’s incomplete contracting framework can help us to think more clearly about how to document a pay for success contract that best supports a SIB transaction.