Diversity in product symbolism: The case of female executive clothing

Many social roles are associated with and identified by product symbols. Yet, frequently, there is much ambiguity among consumers regarding which products denote a given role, and the specific products which communicate desired role attributes. The study examines factors influencing the diversity of clothing symbols associated with the female executive role. A conceptual framework focusing on role-related variables, aesthetic versus instrumental attitudes towards clothing, and information sources consulted in relation to clothing choice is developed and tested on data from a national survey of female executives.     

Developing an empirical socioeconomic typology of counties in five western states

County-level data representing a broad range of socioeconomic variables were obtained for the 190 counties in five western States-California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. A factor analysis of these variables produced eight orthogonal factors: (1) Urbanism, (2) Poverty vs affluence, (3) County tax revenues and services, relative to population, (4) Proportion of aged population, (5) Social stability vs instability, (6) New housing development vs cattle ranching, (7) Crop farming, welfare and unemployment, and (8) Small business activity vs level of federal employment. Several ways of examining scores on these factors were explored and demonstrated: distributions of scores on individual factors across counties were displayed graphically; individual county profiles, comprised of scores on all eight factors, were produced and examined; and groups of counties with similar profiles (representing county “types”) were identified through cluster analysis, and their average profiles and geographic distributions displayed and discussed. Groupings of clusters which were similar in some respects and varied in others were also presented. The utility of these methods for planning activities which may involve individual counties and/or groups of counties is discussed.     

The politics of relevance and the ITU

Ruben Näslund has done the telecommunications community a service by stimulating debate on the issues facing the ITU in the wake of the Nairobi Plenipotentiary Conference. The Nairobi Conference was important for both what was said and resolved and what was unsaid and unresolved. When sovereign nations meet for six weeks there is an interplay of emotions and perceptions which imperceptibly mould policy formulation well after the event. A Plenipotentiary Conference is a political event, however much the engineers, technicians and PTT administrators of the telecommunications community prefer or pretend that is not. The purpose of this article is to examine some of the outstanding ITU issues in light of certain basic facts which structure the interests of member countries.     

Teens and sex

The rate of births to teenagers is down, but who gets the credit? While policy initiatives have been deemed largely ineffective, efforts to shape popular culture through the media are faring better.     

Inevitably reborn: The reawakening of extinct innovations

In our innovation-driven world we tend to lay concepts that have lost their attractiveness to rest and rush to embrace the next giant leap. However, in most fields of creation, patterns of reawakening of old, extinct innovations can be found. It often looks as if new technological and social concepts have a life of their own, survival instincts and adaptive properties: They simply refuse to die. Should these phenomena be resolved on an ad hoc basis or are they grounded in the foundation of social behavior or evolutionary processes of technology? In conditions in which continuum equations would predict the extinction of a population, the presently offered microscopic representation proves that individuals self-organize in spatiotemporally localized adaptive patches that ensure their survival, resilience, and development as a collective. A similar treatment can explain why so many innovations are inevitably reborn. Accordingly, in assessing the value of social ideas, trends and even wants we ought to consider longer time frames following the decline of innovations, otherwise we might prematurely and erroneously discard successful promising concepts.     

Endogenous currency formation in an online environment: The case of Diablo II

This paper presents a case study of the emergence of currency from a barter economy in an online game community. We use this case study to attempt to shed light on the relative importance of various types of frictions that lead to the emergence of money in search-theoretic models of currency formation. In particular, our study highlights the importance of exchange frictions relative to epistemic frictions. Using the records of an online message board dedicated to facilitating trades within the game, we document the emergence of currency and its stability over time.