Empirical Issues Research Articles

Radiocarbon Dating the Fur Trade: Bayesian Analyses of Fur-Trade Era Radiocarbon Dates from the Lower Columbia River

The fur trade era is difficult to radiocarbon date. We demonstrate Bayesian methods robustly resolve some of the issues, applying them to radiocarbon date samples from two fur-trade era Native villages on the Lower Columbia River. Cathlapotle has a rich fur trade era documentary and artifact record; Meier has no documentary record and a sparse fur-trade era artifact record. We successfully tested the methods on Cathlapotle as a proof of concept and resolved empirical issues at both sites. The analysis suggests depopulation of both sites, probably resulting from epidemics, began in the mid to late eighteenth century but before direct contact.

From small and generalized to big or specialized

PurposeRetail has evolved over the past century alongside megatrends such as urbanization, consumerism and digitalization. To contribute to existing knowledge on patterns of retail form evolution, the purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how novel retail forms have evolved in the Swedish sporting goods market.Design/methodology/approachAn evolutionary approach that encompasses population thinking is used to interpret the history of sporting goods retailing in Sweden from the interwar era onwards. Drawing on archival data and interviews, the focus in the historical analysis is on the evolution of retail form variation in terms of size, strategy, product range and retail channel (online/offline).FindingsThe paper suggests that evolutionary mechanisms cumulatively have changed the sports retail population from a rather homogenous set of smaller generalist stores toward a larger variety and specialization in mainly two directions: one trajectory toward small and service-focused niche specialists and the other toward high-volume sales outlets.Originality/valueThe paper provides a detailed empirical account of sports retail history in Sweden and an application of theoretical concepts contributing to an integrated investigation of empirical issues and theoretical positions. It concludes that being able to attain “closures” – finding ways to close off a section of the market and avoid direct competition – has historically been a crucial capability for individual retailers to thrive.

IPad apps and visual methodologies: Empirical and ethical issues in achieving authentic data

This article suggests new ways of working with visual data collected with or via iPads. Using the example of two iPad apps that we co-created, we argue that multimedia and display recorder apps can generate highly authentic data, capable of providing unique insights into the activities and experiences of young children that more conventional data methods cannot achieve. We discuss and illustrate how the use of the apps addresses some empirical and ethical challenges concerning the positioning of the child and researcher in observational research, notably in relation to observer effects and researcher subjectivity. We outline some principles and strategies for researchers interested in using iPad apps and address some challenges and use considerations of these innovative methods. Published: 19 June 2018 Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2018, 26 : 2029 - http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2029

Traditional Knowledge: Watering and Irrigation Practices of Khasi TreeCrop Gardening System in the Northeast Bangladesh

Indigenous Knowledge base tree crop farming system is prevalent from time immemorial to Khasi community in Bangladesh. This is their main subsistence and earning economy. However, environmental degradation with global warming and the shortage of natural resources has threatened the overall cultivation system. The topsoil of landscape with water bodies and ground water are not adequate for watering in the field. Therefore, it is burning question how Khasi mange and organize tree-crop farming in the field and what types of initiates are taken by them to grow tree crops. To explore these issues a qualitative approach and participant observation method with in-depth interviewing techniques, group discussion and key informant methods were employed to elicit data from the field. The collected data have been analyzed in inductive approach and categorized it from various chunks of information as objectives. The findings showed that traditional knowledge as local knowledge of the Khasi has been modified to the context different topographical structure and texture of soil with hill surrounding natural setting considering the local ecology, environment and biodiversities. The obtained findings uphold some empirical issues of indigenous practices with scientific practice of tree crop cultivation for getting soil moisture, fluid and water, which derives from rotted tree-twigs. While organic wastes and the foliage are not adequate, they use harvested rainwater, shallow-well water and ground water by using diverse ways and techniques. The watering and irrigation practice in the tree-fields are administered by the influence of modern irrigation inputs, including traditional Knowledge.

A conceptual view of exergy destruction in mergers and acquisitions

Company mergers are complex where several firm-specific and contextual factors interact with each other impacting the outcome of the process. Although many firms merge with or acquire others to increase the value of their firms, have more market power and gain more ability to negotiate with suppliers or customers, most of mergers and acquisitions result in failures. Despite the poor performances, firms continue to merge and acquire. The existing literature on the other hand lacks in providing a robust theory to the issue of poor post-merger performance. This study thus responds to exploring the issue of high failure rates in mergers and acquisitions in an entirely different way. As the first output of a research programme on the conceptual, theoretical and empirical issues in merger and acquisitions research, we conceptualize the loss of performance or exergy in mergers and acquisitions using thermodynamic analysis of the mixing process in physical systems. Three propositions are developed that conceptualize the ideal conditions for mergers in terms of firm size, relatedness between the merging firms and the ambient states. The exergy loss due to merging increases with the increasing levels of strategic or cultural incompatibility between the two firms. When the sizes of two firms differ, it is preferable for the larger firm to have higher knowledge base than the smaller firm. Lastly, the knowledge intensity of the country that the merging takes place as well as the relative knowledge base of the merging firms do interact and change the post-merger performance significantly.

Theoretical Frontiers in Representative Bureaucracy: New Directions for Research

The notion of a representative bureaucracy has generated a great deal of research although many issues are yet to be resolved and some have not been addressed. This theoretical essay uses a contingency theory approach to address a set of key questions relevant to representative bureaucracy. It discusses who is represented and what values get represented at the aggregate level, why bureaucrats represent, who they represent, and which bureaucrats represent at the individual level, and the empirical issues of critical mass, intersectionality, and how representation might change as a minority becomes a majority. The essay proposes 15 testable hypotheses and four modeling recommendations for empirical analysis.

Clinical trials with multiple endpoints can establish a correlation, but not (yet) causality, between dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids and keratoconjunctivitis sicca

Aim: We review clinical evidence of therapeutic efficacy and effectiveness of omega-3 fatty acids (omega-3s) in keratoconjunctivitis sicca, colloquially known as dry eye disease. In doing so, we identify relevant literature to address the following questions: (1) What definitive guidance can clinical evidence offer eye physicians and their patients? (2) What aspects of omega-3 supplementation lack definitive evidence, and how might economic assessments help?Methods: A targeted and systematic search strategy based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) was designed in this study for refereed clinical trials of omega-3s in dry eye treatment. Four key databases were accessed. Records were filtered through a three-step process using predetermined inclusion criteria. Data was extracted for experimental design, sample population characteristics, content of test and control groups, symptoms and associated opthalmologic conditions, diagnostic measures, patient health outcomes, adverse events, and model time horizon.Results: A total of 219 records were initially identified, of which 21 prospective clinical trials, with a total of 2,973 participants, were admitted for review. Clinical evidence indicates that daily oral supplementation with omega-3s statistically correlates with dry eye treatment in the general symptomatic population as well as induced sub-populations. Reported adverse events are minimal. These trials nonetheless exhibit considerable heterogeneity in clinical endpoints, particularly as a result of the multi-factorial character of dry eye as well as continuous advances in scientific knowledge and technology. Their findings and recommendations appear to be of limited external validity. And causal inferences are needed, but difficult to establish. These have encouraged and sustained wide variations in ophthalmologic practice and normative decision-making.Conclusions: Comparability of omega-3 therapeutic efficacy and effectiveness remains a major challenge in dry eye disease management. Notwithstanding its multi-factorial character, addressing prevailing methodological and empirical issues in clinical trials will help reduce knowledge gaps and normative choices among eye physicians and patients alike. In this regard, pharmacoeconomics offers a useful and robust toolset through which analysis of cost-minimization, cost-effectiveness, and cost-utility as well as meta-analysis can be comparatively pursued. Blending measures of costs and outcomes puts in perspective the heterogeneity of clinical endpoints in keratoconjunctivitis sicca.

Physicians’ communication patterns for motivating rectal cancer patients to biomarker research: Empirical insights and ethical issues

In clinical research – whether pharmaceutical, genetic or biomarker research – it is important to protect research participants’ autonomy and to ensure or strengthen their control over health-related decisions. Empirical–ethical studies have argued that both the ethical concept and the current legalistic practice of informed consent should be adapted to the complexity of the clinical environment. For this, a better understanding of recruitment, for which also the physician–patient relationship plays an important role, is needed. Our aim is to ethically reflect communication processes by identifying patterns used by physicians to motivate patients’ participation in clinical research and to assess whether patients also use these patterns in formulating their own research motivation. We conducted a secondary analysis with empirical data from a research project involving physicians and patients in a clinical research setting of a biomarker study for rectal cancer treatment. Our empirical data included observations of physician–patient consultations ( n = 54) and semi-structured interviews with patients ( n = 40). Overall, we collected 93 interviews. We found two dominant communication patterns, which physicians applied for motivating patients to take part in this research study. Some forms of these patterns tend to mislead patients’ understanding, while others could justifiably be applied in this consultation setting without undermining patients’ autonomy. This insight that the physician–patient communication has a strong influence on patients increases the importance to strengthen physicians’ ethically acceptable communication patterns regarding research participation. We further suggest that there is a need for a critical reflection of the ethics committee’s requirements for information regarding research participation.

Rethinking Industrial Relations revisited

This article traces the origins and consequences of the book Rethinking Industrial Relations and then explores some of the conceptual and empirical issues raised since its publication.

Migration Scholarship in Post-Soviet Russia: Between Western Approaches and Eurasian Geographies

This review explores Russian academic debates around migration, highlighting theoretical, empirical and policy issues which are specific to the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In global terms, FSU migration volumes are high: the Ukraine-Russia migration corridors are second only to those straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Russia’s wealthiest regions are the primary destinations of both internal and FSU migrants. In line with global trends, the response by host countries’ populations and authorities is one of hostility informed by media-fuelled xenophobia. The chaotic and disruptive nature of post-socialist transformations has buffered the effects and lessened the perception of the multiple crises which have enveloped the European Union in the last decade. Eurasian integration and the rift with the West have produced different economic and political conjunctures, whose defining moments are the Ukrainian conflict, Western sanctions and worsening terms of trade for key exports. In Russia, migration debates have focused on FSU-specific emergencies including demographic unbalances, the repatriation of the Russian diaspora and the prospects of large scale Central Asian migration. Migration processes, their subjective understanding as well as Russian policies directed at them, have been informed by the long history of mobility across the Eurasian space. FSU migrants who make up the vast majority of Russia’s migrant population still view the latter as ‘a common house’, a transnational space open to all FSU citizens irrespective of current nationality.

On the Theory of Parties

The theory of parties put forward by scholars associated with the University of California at Los Angeles argues that political parties are best viewed as coalitions of intense policy demanders. These policy demanders use their control of nomination processes to select candidates loyal to the groups’ shared policy priorities. By highlighting the role of groups, this theory has made a major contribution to our understanding of party politics, breathing new life into important debates about the limitations of democratic responsiveness in the United States. The theory, however, leaves a number of theoretical and empirical issues unresolved. The “invisible primary” hypothesis has performed poorly in recent presidential elections. More importantly, we argue that the next generation of party theorizing needs to account for the distinctive roles and capacities of officeholders and voters, and to reengage the idea of formal parties as institutional intermediaries between groups, politicians, and voters.

A Typology of Crowdwork Platforms

Despite growing interest in the gig economy among academics, policy makers and media commentators, the area is replete with different terminology, definitional constructs and contested claims about the ensuing transformation of work organisation. The aim of this positional piece is to provide a timely review and classification of crowdwork. A typology is developed to map the complexity of this emerging terrain, illuminating range and scope by critically synthesising empirical findings and issues from multidisciplinary literatures. Rather than side-tracking into debates as to what exactly constitutes crowdwork, the purpose of the typology is to highlight commonalities rather than distinctions, enabling connections across areas. The framework serves as a heuristic device for considering the broader implications for work and employment in terms of control and coordination, regulation and classification, and collective agency and representation.

Investment, Tobin’s q, and interest rates

We study the impact of stochastic interest rates and capital illiquidity on investment and firm value by incorporating a widely used arbitrage-free term structure model of interest rates into a standard q theoretic framework. Our generalized q model informs us to use corporate credit-risk information to predict investments when empirical measurement issues of Tobin’s average q are significant (e.g., equity is much more likely to be mis-priced than debt), as in Philippon (2009). We find, consistent with our theory, that credit spreads and bond q have significant predictive powers on micro-level and aggregate investments corroborating the recent empirical work of Gilchrist and Zakrajšek (2012). We also show that the quantitative effects of the stochastic interest rates and capital illiquidity on investment, Tobin’s average q, the duration and user cost of capital, and the value of growth opportunities are substantial. These findings are particularly important in today’s low interest rate environment.

The Relationship Between Organization Characteristics and Capital Structure in Malaysian Firms

The determination of an appropriate capital structure of a firm is a critical financial decision for most business organizations for conforming to the firm’s objectives for the maximization of shareholders wealth and firm continuous sustainable growth. This study investigates an empirical issue which has received little attention in the literature; the determinants of capital structure among firms in developing countries. This study employs quantitative method to examine the determinants of the capital structure including asset tangibility, profitability, firm size, liquidity, and non-debt tax which may have significant associations with the firm capital structure. Data on characteristics of the organization and capital structure were collected from three financial period of a firm from a year 2013 until 2015. Sample of minimum 100 companies in consumer sector were retrieved from companies listed in Bursa Malaysia for gauging evidence on firms’ characteristics and capital structure. This study adds new empirical evidence to the body of knowledge by exploring the relationship between firm characteristics and capital structure from the perspectives of large firms in Malaysia.

Ecosystem services as an integrative framework: What is the potential?

Ecosystems approaches, and among them the ecosystem services (ES) framework, are held as promising vehicles for holistic thinking which is usually taken to mean integration of society and nature. The notion of ES is also seen to aid us in saying something about how and what people value in nature. It is hence surprising that among a huge number of scientific works couched in terms in ES, still relatively few explore the explicit engagement of such concepts with stakeholders with respect to empirical issues, including integration. Motivated by a need to empirically test rather than assume the integrative work of ES, we ask: what ways of using the framework as a stakeholder tool are invited, and does integration unfold in practice? Our evidence comes from a study of a group of stakeholders’ perspectives on sustainable management of sheep grazing in low alpine landscapes in the south of Norway. According to the stakeholders, grazing intensity, type and spatiality cannot be understood and arrived at without accounting for how grazing pressure is the result of the co-production of nature and society. By way of four empirical examples, we demonstrate 1) the integrative agency ES can have, 2) how ES can work to integrate despite the framework, 3) how ES can work against integration, and 4) the implicit agency of ES for the co-production of sustainability and grazing pressures. The study demonstrates that there are particular weaknesses in the concept as an integrative device regarding the invisibility of human co-agency. Furthermore, the precise methodological framing of the research is found to be crucial for whether and how human co-agency is made visible through the framework, and thus how ES works as an integrative framework.

Creating an index of local autonomy – theoretical, conceptual, and empirical issues

ABSTRACT Any attempt to create an overall measurement of local autonomy is confronted with difficult questions: Is local autonomy a one-dimensional concept? If it is multidimensional, what dimensions should be taken into account? Are legal, functional, financial, organizational, and vertical aspect of autonomy of equal importance, or must they be weighted? How can they be aggregated: can they simply be summed or are more complicated methods needed? On the basis of an international research project covering some 39 countries over 25 years, we will discuss the choices that have to be made and show what implications they have on results. The various solutions will be tested with respect to their internal consistency and their relations to other measurements of decentralization. An index always reduces complexity and tells only a part of the story, but it can be very useful for rankings, comparisons and further analyses.

Travel Mode and Travel Route Choice Behavior Based on Random Regret Minimization: A Systematic Review

In recent years, traffic congestion has become increasingly serious and the urban environment has deteriorated, posing a challenge to the modern sustainable transportation system. Sustainable travel behavior is a solution that many scholars recognize as being an important aspect in the development of socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable communities. Increasing numbers of studies analyzed the travel choice behavior based on Random Regret-Minimization (RRM) model. RRM considers multiple attribute compromises to capture the traveler’s choice behavior based on minimizing the perceived regret decision criteria. Travel route choice and travel mode choice are interrelated and mutual restraint when a traveler makes a travel decision. To our knowledge, there are limited literatures that overall considered travel mode and travel route choice behavior based on RRM at present. This paper aims to fill this gap and presents a literature review for the application of RRM on sustainable travel mode and travel route choice behavior from empirical issues, influencing factors, theories and methods to evaluate RRM’s potential and limitations as a discrete model of travel choice behavior. The results will provide reference for researchers to study this field and develop novel strategies to promote the sustainable traffic system in the future.

Internal Auditing in India and China: Some Empirical Evidence and Issues for Research

Internal auditing is an important element in the corporate governance framework. Yet, research related to internal auditing, particularly in emerging economies like India and China, is sparse. We use data from responses provided by chief audit executives to provide empirical evidence about the extent of support for internal auditing and the determinants of such support in India and China, and compare the data with those from the United States. We find that such support is negatively related to pressure on internal auditors to suppress or alter their findings. We also provide descriptive evidence about the work and staffing of the internal audit function. We discuss the role of internal auditing in India and identify some possible avenues for future research.

Realists and Idealists in QCA

The sole purpose of the enhanced standard analysis (ESA) is to prevent so-called untenable assumptions in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). One source of such assumptions can be statements of necessity. QCA realists, the majority of QCA researchers, have elaborated a set of criteria for meaningful claims of necessity: empirical consistency, empirical relevance, and conceptual meaningfulness. I show that once Thiem’s (2017) data mining approach to detecting supersets is constrained by adhering to those standards, no CONSOL effect of Schneider and Wagemann’s ESA exists. QCA idealists, challenging most of QCA realists’ conventions, argue that separate searches for necessary conditions are futile because the most parsimonious solution formula reveals the minimally necessary disjunction of minimally sufficient conjunctions. Engaging with this perspective, I address several unresolved empirical and theoretical issues that seem to prevent the QCA idealist position from becoming mainstream.

What does it mean to be rich? Some conceptual and empirical issues

Over the past decade, a growing literature has shed light on the rise of inequalities at the very top of the income distribution. There is no doubt that such extreme inequalities do threaten social...