Business Commons^™

Sources Of Gender Difference In Rural To Urban Migration In Kenya: Does Human Capital Matter?, Richard U. Agesa, Jacqueline Agesa

Jacqueline Agesa

Using data from Kenya this article estimates the urban to rural gender gap in the rate of migration and then decomposes the gap into the explained portion and the portion due to gender differences in coefficients. The former is further decomposed to unveil the relative influence of each explanatory variable on the explained portion of the gender gap in the rate of migration. A non-trivial finding suggests that human capital variables may exert the strongest influence on gender differences in migration, partially explaining the higher incidence of male migration.

Using Mixed Methods To Measure The Perception Of Community Capacity In An Academic–Community Partnership For A Walking Intervention, Charkarra Anderson-Lewis, Diana Castellanos, Arnecca Byrd, Karen Zynda, Alicia Sample, Vickie Reed, Mary Beard, Latessa Minor, Kathleen Yadrick

Diana Cuy Castellanos

H.U.B. City Steps is a 5-year community-based participatory research walking intervention designed to help lower blood pressure in a majority African American population in southern Mississippi via community collaboration and capacity building, increased walking, culturally tailored health education sessions, and motivational interviewing. Building community capacity for physical activity is a key component of this intervention. Qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to assess how project stakeholders perceive the community capacity-building efforts of the project. This article illustrates the baseline results of this mixed methods approach from the perspective of three groups of stakeholders: project researchers and staff, community advisory …

Unpacking Unintended Consequences In Planned Organizationalchanges: A Process Model, Guowei Jian

Guowei Jian

The author develops a process model of the unintended consequences in planned organizational change that draws on the structuration, organizational change, and organizational tension literatures. The model depicts the communicative actions of both senior management and employees and reveals the dynamic through which unintended consequences unfold. The model extends theoretical understandings of planned organizational change and discusses how future research can build a dialectic and dialogic model of planned change focused on employee participation. The author illustrates the model with a case study of organizational change and its unintended consequences. The article concludes with insights on change management for practitioners …

Where Do I Stand? The Interaction Of Leader–Member Exchange And Performance Ratings, Hassan Baker, Guowei Jian, Gail Fairhurst

Guowei Jian

The congruence model of leader–member exchange (LMX) quality predicts that agreement between leader and members regarding relationship quality is associated with follower performance. However, questions remain over how cultural relational norms influence congruence. This study, based on a government-linked international joint venture in Malaysia, investigates cultural relational norms in relation to leader–member agreement on relational quality and leader evaluation of member performance. Our findings revealed that LMX quality agreement was related to in-role and extra-role performance among dyadic relationships conforming to Malaysian cultural norms. This study contributes to understanding how cultural relational norms provide conditions to the congruence model of …

Aggression In Mixed Martial Arts: An Analysis Of The Likelihood Of Winning A Decision, Trevor Collier, Andrew Johnson, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Within the last decade, mixed martial arts has become one of the most popular sports worldwide. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the largest and most successful organization within the industry. In the USA, however, the sport is not sanctioned in all states because some politicians view the sport as too violent. The sport consists of many fighting forms and, unlike boxing, winning a decision requires judging in multiple facets including wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu. In this study, we estimate the likelihood of winning a decision in the UFC. Using data on individual fights, we estimate the probability of …

Measuring Technical Efficiency In Sports, Trevor Collier, Andrew Johnson, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Standard economic production theory is the basis for measuring technical efficiency in sports. Using programming or regression models, efficiency is defined as the distance of a given team observation from the technology. In this article, the authors show that the standard measures of efficiency using deterministic models are biased downward due to serial correlation with respect to the efficiency measure. In particular, if the number of observed wins for a given team is affected by the team’s inefficiency, it is necessarily true that another team is able to produce outside of the technology. As a result, the observed frontier is …

Estimation Of Multi-Output Production Functions In Commercial Fisheries, Trevor Collier, Andrew Mamula, John Ruggiero

Trevor Collier

Measuring the productivity of vessels in a multi-species fishery can be problematic. Typical regression techniques are not capable of handling multiple outputs while Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) tends to ignore the stochastic nature of production. Applied economists have devoted considerable time to this problem and have developed several methods of dealing with the issue of multiple output technologies in commercial fisheries. Our paper contributes to this literature by providing another method for estimating production functions of vessels operating in multi-species fisheries. We utilize a two-stage model – with data from the West Coast Limited Entry Groundfish Trawl Fishery – using …

The Relationship Between Output Variability And Growth: Evidence From Post War U.K. Data, Tony Caporale, Barbara Mckiernan

Tony Caporale

The paper investigates the relationship between output variability and economic growth using a GARCH-M model with industrial production in post-war Great Britain. The data reveals a positive relationship between variability and growth rates.

An Overview Of The Low-Cost Carrier Model In The Russian Market, Tamilla Curtis, Dawna Rhoades

Dr. Tamilla Curtis

This study provides an overview of the low-cost carrier (LCC) model in the Russian market. The LCC model seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the reduction of operating costs, below the traditional airline model. Since Russia is an emerging and developing economy, airlines face a high level of uncertainty. Despite the fact that the Russian aviation market is dominated by a few large carriers, Russian lowcost airlines such as SkyExpress and Avianova have been growing rapidly since starting their operations. While Russian LCCs follow the traditional LCC model, some differences are apparent as a result of the specifics of …

Macroconstants Of Development: A New Benchmark For The Strategic Development Of Advanced Countries And Firms, Andrey Bystrov, Vyacheslav Yusim, Tamilla Curtis

Dr. Tamilla Curtis

This research proposed a new indicator of countries’ development called “macroconstants of development”. The literature review indicates that the concept of "macroconstants of development" is not used at the moment in neither the theory nor the practice of industrial policy. Research of longitudinal data of total GDP, GDP per capita and their derivatives for most countries of the world was conducted. An analysis of statistical information has been done by employing econometric analyses.

Based on the analysis of the statistical data, which characterizes the development of large, technologically advanced countries in ordinary conditions, it was identified that the average acceleration …

Myth: Hard Work And Credentials Determine Employment Opportunities

Alev Dudek

The Quality Of Jobs Created By Entrepreneurs, Adam Seth Litwin, Philip Phan

Adam Seth Litwin

Few dare to challenge the conventional wisdom that small business is the engine of job creation. Indeed, in the United States, the image of the small business owner left largely unfettered to create novel products and services sits on the same cultural plane as baseball and apple pie, and one would be hard-pressed to find a policymaker who would openly question the wisdom that most new jobs arise either directly or indirectly from these small businesses. This near religious belief in the small business owner as job creator yields a steady stream of policies offering tax relief to small businesses, …

Geo, Audio, Video, Photo: How Digital Convergence In Mobile Devices Facilitates Participatory Culture In Libraries, Peta Hopkins, Joanna Hare, Jessie Donaghey, Wendy Abbott

Wendy Abbott

Libraries are often hailed as the cultural and learning hub of their communities. To deepen community engagement and social inclusion, libraries are adopting new technologies to facilitate a participatory and learning culture. With market saturation of smartphones and tablets and their associated apps, new affordances for content creation, curation and sharing show great potential to enhance participatory culture. The typical smartphone or tablet now incorporates digital technologies such as geo-location, audio, video, photo and web technologies. Bringing these technologies into a single device has enabled the development of apps such as Instagram, HistoryPin and SoundCloud. It has also changed the …

The Corporate Shell Game, J.S. Nelson

J.S. Nelson