Idiosyncratic Characteristics Research Articles

First Impressions and Last Resorts

Perceptual theories must explain how perceivers extract meaningful information from a continuously variable physical signal. In the case of speech, the puzzle is that little reliable acoustic invariance seems to exist. We tested the hypothesis that speech-perception processes recover invariants not about the signal, but rather about the source that produced the signal. Findings from two manipulations suggest that the system learns those properties of speech that result from idiosyncratic characteristics of the speaker; the same properties are not learned when they can be attributed to incidental factors. We also found evidence for how the system determines what is characteristic: In the absence of other information about the speaker, the system relies on episodic order, representing those properties present during early experience as characteristic of the speaker. This "first-impressions" bias can be overridden, however, when variation is an incidental consequence of a temporary state (a pen in the speaker's mouth), rather than characteristic of the speaker.

The Neoinstitutional Analysis of Change in Public Services

The purpose of this article is to analyse how neoinstitutional theory can explain change in public services. In fulfilling this objective, the article faces two challenges. The first is to present neoinstitutional theory as a theory that explains how change takes place. The old institutionalism ascribes a predominantly deterministic role to institutional pressures and a merely passive attitude to organizations. It posits that organizations are rigidly trapped into blindly accepting institutional demands in order to secure the social support of their stakeholders. Managers are thus denied any discretion in managing the institutional context, specifically when confronted with coercive institutional pressures, usually in the form of regulations. Thus, the inertia of organizations and their inability or reluctance to change have traditionally been linked with this theory. The second challenge is to analyze change in public service organizations, which have some idiosyncratic characteristics since they operate in strong institutional contexts and weak technical environments. The classic measure of performance profit, which is traditionally missing in public organizations, meant that their managers had to deal more with pressures for legitimacy than for efficiency. The greater public visibility of the organization's internal activities means that public services face a wider range of stakeholders with a greater variety of interests than a typical company does. It is, therefore, more difficult to understand the complex process of change in public service organizations. This article seeks to provide a theoretical approach that aids in understanding how change occurs in public sector organizations by analyzing the roles played by stakeholders and institutional pressures in this process, paying special attention to the way public organizations act to obtain and demonstrate, simultaneously, both legitimacy and efficiency.

How Far and with Whom Do People Socialize?

Hägerstrand's seminal argument that regional science is about people and not just locations is still a compelling and challenging idea when the spatial distribution of activities is studied. In the context of social activity–travel behavior (hosting and visiting), this issue is particularly fundamental as individuals’ main motivation in making social trips is mostly with whom they interact rather than where they go. A useful approach to incorporate the travelers’ social context is to study explicitly the spatial distribution of their social networks, focusing on social locations as emerging from their contacts, rather than analyzing social activity locations in isolation. In this context, this paper studies the spatial distribution of social activities, focusing on the home distances between specific individuals (egos) and the network members (alters) with whom they socialize—serving as a proxy to study social activity–travel location. Using data from a recent study of personal networks and social interaction, and multilevel models that account for the hierarchical structure of these networks, this paper provides empirical evidence on how the characteristics of individuals and their social context relate to the distance separating them. The results strongly suggest that, although the spatial distribution of social interaction has idiosyncratic characteristics, there are several systematic effects associated with the characteristics of egos, alters, and their personal networks that affect the spatial distribution of relationships, and they can contribute to an understanding of where people perform social activities with others.

MECHANICAL MEASUREMENTS IN PUFFED RICE CAKES

ABSTRACT Puffed rice cakes of a national brand, plain, chocolate and cinnamon, were compressed with an Instron Universal Testing Machine (Canton, MA) to 80% deformation, dry and after moisture equilibration at 85% relative humidity. The dry cakes' engineering stress–strain relationships all had a sigmoid shape characteristic to solid cellular materials. They could be described mathematically by a double‐power model, which had been originally developed for bread crumb and soft synthetic foams. At strains above about 50%, the stress had noticeable random fluctuations, whose amplitude progressively increased. These stress fluctuations were most probably records of closed cells bursting. Upon moisture sorption, the prominent shoulder in the stress–strain relationship almost completely disappeared, and the recorded overall stress levels dropped considerably. This plasticizing effect of water was also manifested in the stress‐relaxation pattern of the compacted cakes. The wet samples' stress decay rate was much faster than that of the dry, and their residual stresses reached a much lower level. These observations suggest that the compressive properties of rice cakes can be determined and analyzed by the same general methods that are used for synthetic cellular solids, and that the effect of moisture on their texture can be assessed in terms of the overall stress level at comparable strain, modulus of deformability of the “intact specimen” and the compact's “degree of solidity,” which can be derived from its stress relaxation pattern. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSPuffed crunchy cereals and snacks, including rice cakes, are popular foods in many countries, “crunchiness” being their unique attraction. Its objective characterization by instrumental methods and how it might be affected by composition and moisture are of great interest to numerous food companies. The compressibility of rice cakes is governed, simultaneously, by solid foam deformation and multifracture mechanics. The result is force–displacement curves that are both irregular and irreproducible, but which still have certain idiosyncratic characteristics. Their identification and interpretation are crucial to quality control and product development. The special tools to do that include mathematical models to characterize the mechanical signature's overall shape, in order to quantify the cakes' stiffness, and time series analysis, in order to assess the role of brittleness. For the methodology implementation, other factors, such as the “averaging effect” on random events and “glass transition,” also had to be taken into account as demonstrated.

Stem Cell Therapy: A Hope for Dying Hearts

The restoration of functional myocardium following heart failure still remains a formidable challenge among researchers. Irreversible damage caused by myocardial infarction is followed by left ventricular remodeling. The current pharmacologic and interventional strategies fail to regenerate dead myocardium and are usually insufficient to meet the challenge caused by necrotic cardiac myocytes. There is growing evidence, suggesting that the heart has the ability to regenerate through the activation of resident cardiac stem cells or through the recruitment of a stem cell population from other tissues such as bone marrow. These new findings belie the earlier conception about the poor regenerating ability of myocardial tissue. Stem cell therapy is a promising new approach for myocardial repair. However, it has been limited by the paucity of cell sources for functional human cardiomyocytes. Moreover, cells isolated from different sources exhibit idiosyncratic characteristics including modes of isolation, ease of expansion in culture, proliferative ability, characteristic markers, etc., which are the basis for several technical manipulations to achieve successful engraftment. Clinical trials show some evidence for the successful integration of stem cells of extracardiac origin in adult human heart with an improved functional outcome. This may be attributed to the discrepancies in the methods of detection, study subject selection (early or late post transplantation), presence of inflammation, and false identification of infiltrating leukocytes. This review discusses these issues in a comprehensive manner so that their physiological significance in animal as well as in human studies can be better understood.

Is China on the Investment Development Path?

The paper investigates the relationship between China’s net direct foreign investment position and economic development and the investment development path (IDP) theory introduced by Dunning (1981). Using annual data for the period 1979 to 2005 and a fourth order single variable polynomial function we demonstrate that form of the IDP for China and conclude that China entered stage 3 of the path postulated by the IDP theory. By analyzing key factors which have impacted FDI inflows and outflows we find that certain idiosyncratic characteristics of Chinese companies and institutional factors may limit the significant increase in the multinationalization of Chinese firms which would be required for the country to move along the IDP.

Social Responsibility in SMEs: A Conceptual Framework

AbstractThe increasing pressure that business sector has to explicitly engage in activities described as social responsibility along with the proliferation of different approaches, and methodologies for its implementation, can confuse business managers and make them lose the opportunity of developing a real and strategic firm mentality of social responsibility. The alignment between the business strategy and the social responsibility actions is needed, in order to prevent social responsibility to be merely a aggregation of a series of uncoordinated actions not always effective, neither for the most relevant business stakeholders nor for the business competitiveness. As Porter and Kramer (2006) state a company must integrate a social perspective into the core framework it already uses to guide its business strategy. If the firm social strategy is anchored in its particular business strategy, social responsibility actions represent an opportunity to create value for the society and for the business. But all this value creating approach of social responsibility it would be only an authentic social responsibility strategy if there is a shared system of values along the organization that supports it, nevertheless social responsibility wouldn’t be but a series of cosmetic efforts to demonstrate the company’s social awareness about social issues. The evaluation of the idiosyncratic characteristics of the small firms evidences that implementing social responsibility actions is focused in its core business strategy, is based on close relations and cooperation with their closest stakeholders and is conditioned by the systems of values. This paper gives new insights into the engagement of businesses in the social responsibility extracted from the small size firms rationale and to apply it to deepening into some basic questions that guide firms to develop a veritable and value-creating Social Responsibility Strategy.

A test for proportional hazards assumption within the class of exponential conditional mean models

Two classes of econometric estimators are popular for modeling outcomes with idiosyncratic characteristics such as those present in medical costs data: (1) estimators based on the exponential conditional mean models where the mean function of the outcome is equal to exponential of the linear predictor and (2) estimators based on the proportional hazard assumption where hazard function of the outcome is equal to exponential of the linear predictor. Recent work has provided guidance both on choosing between the two classes of estimators and also on choosing among alternative estimators within the exponential conditional mean framework. The present work extends this literature by proposing a test for identifying the proportional hazards assumption within the class of exponential conditional mean models, thereby eliminating the need to run both classes of models in order to make informative choices. We implement this test using the generalized gamma regression model, thereby allowing the analyst to select between both parametric alternatives and also the semi-parametric Cox model from one cohesive framework. Our simulation results indicate that the proposed test perform as well as the traditional test of proportional hazards assumption following a Cox regression based on power and Type I error under a variety of data generating mechanisms. We illustrate its use in an analysis of physician visits.

Latino' Education in Mormon Utah, 1910–1960

Looking at the history of education of Latinos in Utah, I suggest that the lack of educational opportunities has been the most effective mechanism to keep Latinos from achieving equal representation and from gaining cultural and historical identity. In comparison to other Latinos in the rest of the nation, the predominant factor that shapes the education of Latinos in Utah is religion, that is, Mormonism. As a set of beliefs, and as set of practices, Mormonism is embedded with racial underpinnings, theological premises, and social class undertones which undermine the Latinos’ educational efforts and place them in a system of socio-religious apartness. The idiosyncratic characteristics of Utah's educational system allows for the reinterpretation of national educational policies, such as the Americanization Programs, within cultural-religious parameters that produces different levels of educational discrimination within the Latino population. Nonetheless, Latinos challenged the educational practices of the state by creating their own schools, by proposing alternative methods of education, and by unraveling the intrinsic connections between religion, race, and socio-economic class. As a consequence, Latinos in Utah have proposed educational alternatives that are more holistic and inclusive.

Symbiotic transformations: youth, global media and indigenous culture in Malta

The article explores the impact of global commercial media on young people’s developing perceptions of their own cultural identity. It works from the premise that local cultures are not so much getting replaced by ‘global culture’ as inflecting it by coexisting with it. The discussion draws on data collected in the course of focus group interviews with young adults living in the Mediterranean island of Malta, in order to stress the specificity with which young people from different cultural contexts consume global media. I argue that, as in other postcolonial communities, though the choices available to Maltese youth have become strongly inflected (or ‘hybridized’) by the commercial imperatives of global media, the ways in which they are appropriated and played out retain very idiosyncratic characteristics, which mark them out as uniquely Maltese.

Power, Money, and Trade: Decisions That Shape Global Economic Relations

Acknowledgements Note to Instructors Introduction: Themes and Goals Part I: Approaches to International Relations 1. Competing Theories and the Evolution of Paradigms 2. The Levels of Analysis - System-Level Arguments 3. Theories from the National or Domestic Level 4. Bureaucratic Politics 5. Theories Based on the Idiosyncratic Characteristics of Individuals 6. Ideas as Causal Factors Part II: The Politicization of International Economic Issues Introduction: The Interplay of Power and Wealth 7. The Politics of Trade 8. The Politics of International Monetary Relations 9. The Politics of International Investment Part III: Turning Points in Foreign Economic Policy Behaviour 10. Britain's Repeal of the Corn Laws 11. The Cobden-Chevalier Treaty 12. Sir John A. Macdonald and the Introduction of Canada's National Policy 13. The Failure of Caprivi's New Course: Imperial Germany Defects from the Free Trade Regime 14. Britain's Refusal to Retaliate on Tariffs, 1906-1911 15. The Reciprocity Election in Canada, 1911 16. Britain's Return to the Gold Standard After World War I 17. The Passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff 18. The Creation of the Bretton Woods Monetary Regime 19. South Korea Opts for Export-Oriented-Industrialization 20. The Collapse of the Bretton Woods Monetary Regime 21. Brazil's Responses to the Debt Crisis 22. Canada and the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. 23. Japan, International Monetary Responsibilities, and Policy Coordination: The Louvre and Plaza Accords 24. Germany's Role in European Monetary Union 25. Mahathir, Financial Crisis, and Malaysia's Capital Controls Conclusion: Theories, Evidence, and the Evolution of the International Political Economy Glossary Bibliography Index

Corporate social responsibility and corporate performance: evidence from a panel of US listed companies

We investigate whether inclusion and permanence in the domini social index (DSI) affects corporate performance on a sample of around 1000 firms in a 13-year interval by controlling for size, industry, business cycle and time invariant firm idiosyncratic characteristics. Our results find partial support to the hypothesis that corporate social responsibility is a move from the shareholders wealth to a multi-stakeholders welfare target. On the one side, permanence into the domini index (DI) is shown to increase (reduce) significantly total sales per employee (returns on equity but not when large and R&D investing firms are excluded from the sample). On the other side, lower returns on equity for Domini firms seem nonetheless to be accompanied by relatively lower conditional volatility and lower reaction to extreme shocks with respect to the control sample. An explanation for these findings, suggested by the inspection of Domini criteria, is that social responsibility implies, on the one side, decisions leading to higher cost of labour and of intermediate output, but may, on the other side, enhance involvement, motivation and identification of the workforce with company goals with positive effects on productivity.

Idiosyncratic portfolio characteristics of seed and venture capital funds

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to uncover the strategic nature of formal seed capital in Norway as opposed to equally sized venture capital firms.Design/methodology/approachAs the population of Norwegian seed capital firms is embedded in this study, a differential approach is taken when contrasting these seed capital firms with venture capital firms of approximately the same size.FindingsThe findings indicate that seed capital firms take higher market risk than their counterparts, and that they diversify to a larger extent than comparable venture capital firms. The latter appears to be a function of the former.Originality/valueThis study reviews previous categorizations of seed capital providers, henceforth building towards an overall taxonomy of seed capital.

When the Market Misleads: Stock Prices, Firm Behavior, and Industry Evolution

This paper augments learning and institutional theories of firm behavior with an explicit focus on the idiosyncratic characteristics of learning from financial markets. Various streams of literature implicitly assume that financial markets influence firm strategies, yet the specifics of these interactions are not well specified. Motivated by a case study of the retail brokerage industry, this study proposes three particular characteristics of learning from financial markets. First, there is vicarious learning from outcomes (e.g., stock valuations), yet this has characteristics that are more similar to institutional forms of mimetic isomorphism. Second, the forward-looking and complex nature of financial valuations incites a paradoxically simplified type of crude heuristic learning. Third, there is a mutual and simultaneous learning process in that firms learn from financial markets, which in turn are themselves in a process of social construction. This combination of special characteristics suggests a number of learning pathologies that center around an increasing likelihood (compared with other types of learning and adaptation) of falling prey to misleading signals. A computer simulation, based on a model in which Cournot duopolists play a multistage game involving investment and cost reduction, explores the implications of these characteristics and pathologies in a systematic way.

Discussing patients? drinking and eating habits in medical and homeopathic consultations

We explore the variety of practices professionals and patients use whilst discussing patients' eating and drinking habits in general practice and in homeopathic consultations. Our aim is to show how the interaction is shaped, on the one hand, by the professionals' theories and goals and, on the other hand, by the participants' orientations to other contextual features. In these two fields of medicine the discussions on the patients' lifestyle have a different role in the healing process: in general practice, drinking is considered a possible health risk, but in homeopathy, information concerning patients' eating and drinking habits is needed for defining the patients' idiosyncratic characteristics. This difference is indicated in the ways in which the professionals deliver their questions about patients' lifestyles and in the ways in which the patients design their responses and the discussion develops. However, the practices used by the participants also reflect their orientation to the institution-related tasks, such as maintaining professional neutrality and being a good patient, as well as to the wider cultural norms and discourses concerning socially appropriate behavior outside the institution. We also discuss the extent to which these different orientations are consistent or inconsistent with the professionals' theories and goals.

Online Auctions: Does 'Ebay' & Co. Provide New Tasks to Lawyers?

Commentators tend to consider the topic they are dealing with to be idiosyncratic. This is particularly true with respect to topics involving new technology. This paper examines the truth behind this statement with respect to online auctions, as exemplified by the auction platform ebay and others. This paper argues that online auctions exhibit few idiosyncratic characteristics with which cannot be dealt under contemporary contract law. The legal questions considered in the context of online auctions have been considered for decades under the general provisions for digital and general contract law, as established under the German Civil Code (Buergerliches Gesetzbuch). The fact that legal traditions offers solutions to the problems that new technologies bring about does not mean that new rules could easily (and should) transfer traditional methods into the digital age. This paper explores this argument, using examples from the German draft law on the communication among institutions and parties involved in legal proceedings (Justizkommunikationsgesetz) and recent German cases. As rapid change has become part of lawyers' day-to-day work, sometimes regulatory passivity furthers both the more efficient and the just decision. At least, regulatory passivity avoids the risk that the legislature blurs, rather than clarifies, the current legal situation by activist steps made under populist motives. Sometimes wisdom comes along with waiting.

The evolution of the knowledge structure of fuel cells

Recognizing the critical role played by science and technology in the development of fuel cells, this article aims to characterize the evolution of the S&T knowledge bases of fuel cells over the nineties, using data on patents and scientific publications. The field of fuel cells is particularly heterogeneous. It covers diverse sub-fields that are marked by idiosyncratic characteristics (e.g. actors, demand, and input) and different historical developments. Although this heterogeneity of the field of fuel cells is reflected in the dynamics of S&T knowledge generation within and across its sub-fields too, this article shows that it does not entail the absence of cognitive interrelations between their S&T knowledge bases. For that purpose, the article uses simultaneous mapping approach of their S&T knowledge bases by means of textual analysis.

An assessment of the impact and visibility of South African journals

Recognizing the critical role played by science and technology in the development of fuel cells, this article aims to characterize the evolution of the S&T knowledge bases of fuel cells over the nineties, using data on patents and scientific publications. The field of fuel cells is particularly heterogeneous. It covers diverse sub-fields that are marked by idiosyncratic characteristics (e.g. actors, demand, and input) and different historical developments. Although this heterogeneity of the field of fuel cells is reflected in the dynamics of S&T knowledge generation within and across its sub-fields too, this article shows that it does not entail the absence of cognitive interrelations between their S&T knowledge bases. For that purpose, the article uses “simultaneous mapping' approach of their S&T knowledge bases by means of textual analysis.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Performance: Evidence from a Panel of US Listed Companies

We investigate whether inclusion and permanence in the Domini social index affects corporate performance on a sample of around 1,000 firms in a 13-year interval by controlling for size, industry, business cycle and time invariant firm idiosyncratic characteristics. Our results find partial support to the hypothesis that corporate social responsibility is a move from the shareholders wealth to a multistakeholders welfare target. On the one side, permanence into the Domini index is shown to increase (reduce) significantly total sales per employee (returns on equity but not when large and R&D investing firms are excluded from the sample). On the other side, lower returns on equity for Domini firms seem nonetheless to be accompanied by relatively lower conditional volatility and lower reaction to extreme shocks with respect to the control sample. An explanation for these findings, suggested by the inspection of Domini criteria, is that social responsibility implies, on the one side, decisions leading to higher cost of labour and of intermediate output, but may, on the other side, enhance involvement, motivation and identification of the workforce with company goals with positive effects on productivity.

Metaphors

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize the study of metaphors within constructivist-informed research, in the hope that this process will orient cognitive scientists to the usefulness of implementing qualitative research methodologies, especially to using the person of the researcher as the primary research instrument. First, I explore some of the differences between Johnson and Lakoff’s Contemporary Metaphor Theory (CMT) and approaches evolving from it on one hand, and the clinical approach to metaphor based on a constructivist therapy model, on the other. CMT has been one of the most significant forces that helped shift cognitive science toward an embodied approach to cognition. While it has succeeded to place physical experience back where it belongs in reason and meaning, CMT has, however, also fallen into some positivist traps which lead to problems such as a dualism, a split between the knower and the known, and with that, to a distrust of introspective, first-person accounts. In the process of finding conceptual metaphors — generalizations that govern metaphorical expressions — CMT often deletes the idiosyncratic characteristics and presuppositions implicit in linguistic metaphors; it divorces them from people’s sensory experiences, the “here and now” and the intent of their communications. The constructivist approach to metaphor that I present here accepts as a priori assumptions much of what workers of CMT are out to prove. In particular, it takes the correlation of conceptual metaphors and physical experience, as well as the unity of language and thought as pragmatic givens. Emulating the constructivist therapist’s approach to metaphors, I show how it is possible to deconstruct conceptual metaphors into minute sensory distinctions, using one’s own person as the main tool, for the purpose of helping people change their experiences in desired ways, at will. I illustrate this process by numerous examples from a wide field of applications, including mathematics education and psychotherapy.