New Labour at work: long-term unemployment and the geography of opportunity

New Labour has placed great faith in active labour market policiesto address problems of long-term unemployment and poverty. Thispaper considers the effectiveness of welfare-to-work programmesin light of persistent regional employment disparities withinthe UK. It is argued that the government has proceeded froma flawed analysis of the causes and magnitude of long-term unemployment,framing the issue in terms of ‘worklessness’ andneglecting demand-side concerns of job availability and jobquality.     

Mutual fund performance: false discoveries, bias, and power

We analyze the performance of mutual funds from a multiple inference perspective. When the number of funds is large, random fluctuations will cause some funds falsely to appear to outperform the rest. To account for such “false discoveries,” a multiple inference approach is necessary. Performance evaluation measures are unlikely to be independent across mutual funds. At the same time, the data are typically not sufficient to estimate the dependence structure of performance measures. In addition, the performance evaluation model can be misspecified. We contribute to the existing literature by applying an empirical Bayes approach that offers a possible way to take these factors into account. We also look into the question of statistical power of the performance evaluation model, which has received little attention in mutual fund studies. We find that the assumption of independence of performance evaluation measures results in significant bias, such as over-estimating the number of outperforming mutual funds. Adjusting for the mutual fund investment objective is helpful, but it still does not result in the discovery of a significant number of successful funds. A detailed analysis reveals a very low power of the study. Even if outperformers are present in the sample, they might not be recognized as such and/or too many years of data might be required to single them out.     

Managing Cultural Diversity in Collaborations: A focus on management tensions

Abstract

This article explores the management of cultural diversity in public and not-for-profit collaborations spanning organizational, professional and national boundaries. Through the framing of a culture paradox, it identifies three interrelated tensions pertaining to the management of cultural diversity towards collaborative advantage. These tensions address: interactions between organizations within a collaboration; interactions between individual actors and their orientation towards the collaboration and their host organization; and the quantity and extent of cultural diversity within a collaboration. The culture paradox and its inherent management tensions provide theoretical and practical conceptualizations that are relevant to management and governance of collaboration.     

A Sociology of Expectations: Retrospecting Prospects and Prospecting Retrospects

Future expectations and promises are crucial to providing the dynamism and momentum upon which so many ventures in science and technology depend. This is especially the case for pre-market applications where practical utility and value has yet to be demonstrated and where investment must be mobilised. For instance, clinical biotechnology (including a wide range of genetic therapeutic and engineering applications) has been at the centre of ferocious debates about whether or not promises and expectations will be realized. In some cases, the failure of expectations has severely damaged the reputation and credibility of professions, institutions and industry. The need for a better analytical understanding of the dynamics of expectations in innovation is both necessary and timely. This paper develops the basis for a sociology of expectations, drawing on recent writing within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and case studies of biotechnology innovation. In particular, we offer a model for understanding how expectations will predictably vary according to some key parameters. Such factors include the degree to which technologies and innovation relationships are either relatively established or newly emergent. Expectations will also vary according actors' relative closeness and involvement in knowledge production itself. The paper proceeds by analyzing the way expectations in clinical biotechnology have changed over time. That is, we compare the way the future was once represented with the way it has been represented more recently. The paper concludes by offering a means by which it is possible to map or model the "situatedness of expectations'.     

Solidarity in Climate/Immigrant Justice Direct Action: Lessons from Movements in the US South

In October of 2012, youth organizers from the immigrant justice and climate change resistance movements in the southeastern US metropolitan region of Atlanta, Georgia, coordinated a direct action tactic framed by a unified narrative justifying collaboration between immigrant and climate justice activists on equal terms. In a continuing collaborative relationship, these organizers embraced mutually strategic narratives rooted in local civil rights history, but rejected common ‘global climate justice’ narratives used to frame social and environmental collaborative organizing. We examine the departure from ‘global climate justice’ narratives, which was exemplified by coalition building in Georgia, to argue that scholarship articulating ‘global climate justice’ as a new context for integrating social and environmental movements must anticipate barriers to these solidarities, especially historical, regional and racialized dynamics of power among organizations engaged in these developing alliances. Based on an investigation of strategic alliances between anti‐racist, immigrant justice organizers and climate change activists in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, we argue that climate justice narratives in both activism and scholarship would benefit from more attention to the particular political and cultural geographies in which diverse forms of climate justice organizing can take hold.     

The Moderating Influence of Psychographics in Homestay Tourism in Malaysia

Like other special interest tourism products, homestay as a community-based tourism product has shown substantial growth in terms of number of visits in recent years. Nevertheless, compared to other special interest tourism products, visitor behavior in homestay tourism has been neglected by the literature. This study fills this void by investigating the relationships between perceived value, satisfaction, and behavioral intention, and by examining the moderating influence of psychographics in a homestay tourism context. Respondents were visitors who visited selected homestay villages in Malaysia. Multi-group structural equation analysis was used to test for group differences in the structural weights.     

Flexible recession: the temporary staffing industry and mediated work in the United States

The evolution of the temporary staffing industry (TSI) in theUS is examined, with particular reference to the structuralfunctions of temporary work during the boom of the 1990s, the‘flexible’ recession of 2001, and the subsequent‘jobless’ recovery. It is argued that the TSI isincreasingly playing a systemic, macroregulatory role in theUS labour market, where it now accounts for a disproportionateshare of the costs of labour-market adjustment. The developmentpath of the TSI is closely intertwined with the wider restructuringof the US economy, where it has assumed a significant presenceas a purveyor of low-cost, flexibly mediated labour.