Child injury prevention in Vietnam: achievements and challenges

As with other South Asian countries, injury is becoming a leading cause of death and morbidity among children in Vietnam. In response to the increasing burden of child injury, government and non-government agencies in Vietnam have combined efforts during the last decade to develop and implement various child injury prevention strategies and programmes. This article provides, through a review of relevant documents and interviews with major stakeholders, an overview of these efforts and highlights major challenges to child injury prevention in the country. The findings point to notable achievements in terms of increasing awareness of injury facing children at all levels in the community and developing a sound injury prevention policy framework in a relatively short period of time. However, much needs to be done to implement necessary environmental and legislative changes, strengthen child injury surveillance and injury prevention research; and to improve access to health services. The insight into the experience of Vietnam could benefit other low- and middle-income countries with a high burden of child injury.     

The 18C's model for a successful long-term outsourcing arrangement

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that contribute to a successful long-term outsourcing arrangement, particularly in the facilities management area. Organisations expect to achieve many benefits from outsourcing, despite the fact that there are significant risks associated with unsuccessful outsourcing. The paper analyses a successful multiple activity outsourcing case study. Six managers and team leaders, who have initiated and managed the sixteen outsourced activities during an eight year period, were interviewed. In order to complement and confirm the interviews, the observation of four monthly performance review meetings was conducted. Eighteen key success factors for a long-term outsourcing arrangement have been identified and approved by the interviewees. They have been used to construct the 18C's model.     

Peer effects in learning HIV results

How do neighbors positively or negatively influence individuals living in rural Malawi to learn their HIV results? Using data of location of homes and distance to neighbors, we measure the social network effects of neighbors' learning their HIV results on individuals own learning. Using the fact that neighbors were randomly offered monetary incentives of varying amounts to learn their HIV results, we find positive effects of neighbors attending clinics on others living nearby: a 10 percentage point increase of the percentage of neighbors (approximately 2.4 individuals) learning their HIV results increases the probability of learning HIV results by 1.1 percentage points. The strongest network effects are among closest neighbors; we find no effect among religious social networks. We also find a negative interaction between direct cash incentives and peers: the effect of peers doubles among those who were not offered any individual financial incentive to learn their HIV results.     

Decisiveness of contributors’ perceptions in elections

We consider a model of two-candidate elections with a one-dimensional policy space. Spending on campaign advertisements can directly influence voters’ preferences, and contributors give the money for campaign spending in exchange for promised services if the candidate wins. We find that the winner of the election depends crucially on the contributors’ beliefs about who is likely to win and the contribution market tends toward nonsymmetric equilibria in which one of the two candidates has no chance of winning. If the voters are only weakly influenced by advertising or if permissible campaign spending is small, then the candidates choose policies close to the median voter’s ideal point, but the contributors still determine the winner. Uncertainty about the Condorcet winning point (or its nonexistence) can change these results and generate equilibria in which both candidates have substantial probabilities of winning.     

Indicators of leadership development in undergraduate military education

Despite the reputation of service academies and military colleges for producing leaders of character who serve as commissioned officers in America's armed forces, little is known about the actual effects these institutions have on the leadership development of their students. A two‐step process, this cross‐sectional study sought to investigate leadership development through the lens of the leadership identity development model as measured by the aptitude for commission grade. From a review of the military leadership curriculum at American service academies and military colleges, the initial phase of research established that leadership development occurred. The second phase used quantitative methods and a cross‐sectional design to investigate the effects of peer ranking, cumulative grade point average, leadership grades, and varsity athletic participation on leadership development throughout four years of undergraduate education. Findings indicated that company ranking by peers was significant regardless of gender or ethnicity. Mixed significant findings resulted for grade point average, leadership grades, and varsity athletic participation when based on gender and self‐identified minority status.     

The impact of visualizing use versus acquisition of a product on the appeal of its complement

Prior work on consumer visualization has focused on how visualization increases the appeal of the imagined product itself. Instead, the present work examines the effects of visualization on the appeal of the imagined product's complement. The authors distinguish between two visualized consumption actions: use and acquisition. Both are predicted to increase the appeal of the complement, but this increase is expected to be asymmetric, with imagined acquisition leading to a greater increase than imagined use. Specifically, the authors propose that imagining use evokes consideration of how one would interact with the product, which increases the salience of the imagined product's attributes. Conversely, imagining acquisition evokes consideration of why one would purchase the product, which increases the salience of the imagined product's goals. As complementarity is defined by products’ shared goals (not physical attributes), it is predicted and shown that imagining acquisition results in a greater increase in the appeal of the complement than imagining use. Four studies demonstrate the asymmetric effect of imagined use versus acquisition on preference, choice, and willingness‐to‐pay for a complement. The studies also provide evidence for the proposed process and rule out several alternative explanations. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The Sociomaterial Negotiation of Social Entrepreneurs’ Meaningful Work

This research examines the role of digital technology in the constitution of meaningful work. Adopting a sociomaterial perspective, we argue that meaningful work emerges as an outcome of a complex negotiation between individuals and their digital devices. This process was explored through video diaries and interviews with social entrepreneurs, capturing moments of their everyday meaning‐making and encouraging reflexivity. Accounting for their sociomaterial practice led participants to reaffirm their work as uniquely meaningful, produce more nuanced accounts of meaningfulness and/or make pragmatic adjustments to their meaning making. Whilst authenticity was a key meta‐narrative in these accounts, it also produced tensional knots which, in their unravelling, required the adoption of more practicable meanings of work. The paper concludes by urging scholars to de‐centre the human from their analysis to provide a more complete account of meaningful work.     

The Impact of Placing Adolescent Males into Foster Care on Education,Income Assistance,and Convictions

Understanding the causal impacts of taking at‐risk youth into government care is part of the evidence base for policy. Two sources of exogenous variation affecting alternative subsets of the at‐risk population provide causal impacts interpreted as local average treatment effects. Placing 16‐ to18‐year‐old males into care decreases or delays high school graduation, increases income assistance receipt, and has alternative effects on criminal convictions depending upon the instrument employed. This suggests that asking whether more or fewer children should be taken into care is insufficient; it also matters which, and how, children are taken into care.