Large-scale Empirical Research Research Articles

On the right track? Islamic schools in the Netherlands after an era of turmoil

The Netherlands currently has 43 Islamic primary schools. Each is fully subsidised by the government. Yet since the first school was established in 1988 Islamic schools have been confronted with obstacles by the Ministry of Education, bad press and increasingly strict state supervision. Under pressure to improve their image, since 2008 Dutch Islamic primary schools have turned their attention away from expanding their numbers and instead focussed on improving school quality. In this article we describe the various developments and draw upon large scale empirical research to demonstrate the present state of affairs both in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive pupil achievements. We argue that the present results offer reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

Analyzing fault and severity in pedestrian–motor vehicle accidents in China

The number of pedestrian–motor vehicle accidents and pedestrian deaths in China surged in recent years. However, a large scale empirical research on pedestrian traffic crashes in China is lacking. In this study, we identify significant risk factors associated with fault and severity in pedestrian–motor vehicle accidents. Risk factors in several different dimensions, including pedestrian, driver, vehicle, road and environmental factors, are considered. We analyze 6967 pedestrian traffic accident reports for the period 2006–2010 in Guangdong Province, China. These data, obtained from the Guangdong Provincial Security Department, are extracted from the Traffic Management Sector-Specific Incident Case Data Report. Pedestrian traffic crashes have a unique inevitability and particular high risk, due to pedestrians’ fragility, slow movement and lack of lighting equipment. The empirical analysis of the present study has the following policy implications. First, traffic crashes in which pedestrians are at fault are more likely to cause serious injuries or death, suggesting that relevant agencies should pay attention to measures that prevent pedestrians from violating traffic rules. Second, both the attention to elderly pedestrians, male and experienced drivers, the penalty to drunk driving, speeding, driving without a driver's license and other violation behaviors should be strengthened. Third, vehicle safety inspections and safety training sessions for truck drivers should be reinforced. Fourth, improving the road conditions and road lighting at night are important measures in reducing the probability of accident casualties. Fifth, specific road safety campaigns in rural areas, and education programs especially for young children and teens should be developed and promoted. Moreover, we reveal a country-specific factor, hukou, which has significant effect on the severity in pedestrian accidents due to the discrepancy in the level of social insurance/security, suggesting that equal social security level among urban and rural people should be set up. In addition, establishing a comprehensive liability distribution system for non-urban areas and roadways will be conducive to both pedestrians’ and drivers’ voluntary compliance with traffic rules.

Employment Activities and Experiences of Adults with High-Functioning Autism and Asperger’s Disorder

There is limited large-scale empirical research into the working lives of adults who have an autism spectrum disorder with no co-occurring intellectual disability. Drawing on data from a national survey, this report describes the employment activities and experiences of 130 adults with Asperger's Disorder (AD) and high functioning autism (HFA) in Australia. Outcome measures include current occupation; occupational skill level and alignment with educational attainment; type of job contract; hours of work; support received to find work; support received in the workplace; and positive and negative experiences of employment. The findings confirm and expand upon existing evidence that adults with AD and HFA, despite their capacity and willingness to work, face significant disadvantages in the labour market and a lack of understanding and support in employment settings.

Facilitating age diversity in organizations – part I: challenging popular misbeliefs

Purpose – In recent years, significant demographic changes in most industrial countries have tremendously affected the age distribution of workers in organizations. In general, the workforce has become more age-diverse, providing significant and new challenges for human resource management and leadership processes. The current paper aims to address age-related stereotypes as a major factor that might impede potential benefits of age diversity in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – After a brief review of potential detrimental effects of age-related stereotyping at work, the authors discuss the validity of typical age stereotypes based on new findings from large-scale empirical research with more than 160,000 workers overall. Findings – Although the research summarized in this review is based on large samples including several thousand workers, the cross-sectional nature of the studies does not control for cohort or generational effects, nor for (self-)selection biases. However, the summarized results still provide important guidelines given that challenges due to age diversity in modern organizations today have to be dealt with regardless of the concrete origins of the age-related differences. Originality/value – This is one of the first reviews challenging popular misbeliefs about older workers based on large-scale empirical research

A Tribute to Elinor Ostrom August 7, 1933–June 12, 2012

[Author Affiliation]James M Walker, * The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Department of Economics, Indiana University, Wylie Hall 105, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: walkerj@indiana.edu.Elinor Ostrom passed away June 12, 2012, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Her husband, Vincent, passed away June 29, 2012, after a long battle with prostate cancer. Lin and Vincent left a lasting legacy as researchers who spent their lives focusing on complex, highly relevant policy issues and as educators who gave unselfishly to their students and colleagues.Lin dedicated her pathbreaking book Governing the Commons (Ostrom 1990) to Vincent for his love and contestation. In many ways, this dedication also captures the approach Lin and Vincent brought to the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, hereafter the Workshop, which they founded in 1973.1 The research and educational life of the Workshop is very much a product of the passion and intellectual drive that lies at the core of their research programs and their lives. In essence, the students, colleagues, staff, and visiting scholars of the Workshop became the Ostrom's family. In a setting that fostered collaboration and contestation in a multidisciplinary environment where multiple methods of analysis were embraced, Lin and Vincent created a unique and world-renowned institution for the study of collective action and self-governance.As a Ph.D. student in political science at UCLA in the early 1960s, Lin's dissertation research grew out of a class project examining the role of entrepreneurs in devising groundwater management rules in California. In her research, she concluded that the use of equity proceedings in state courts (the shadow of the law) was an important facilitator in devising rules that accounted for the complex patterns of interagency arrangements necessary to prevent saltwater incursion from the ocean and to assure the replenishment of groundwater supplies. Even in these early years, Lin's awareness of the importance of multiple methods of research was apparent. In addition to the analytical framework guiding her research, she conducted in-depth interviews, archival research, and nonparticipant observation of negotiations to establish the basis for institutional agreements. What was to become a common theme in her work, Lin discovered in her dissertation research that a factor crucial to successful local institutional agreements was the existence of institutional arrangements at the state level that authorized local associations, special districts, and public and private agencies to deal with local problems, relying on local knowledge of particular physical and contractual constraints.Lin's path to the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is one of intellectual passion, collaboration, and what appeared to be a limitless capacity for work. Despite Lin's early research on natural resource management, her first large-scale empirical research program as a faculty member at Indiana University focused on the provision of government services. In this research, it was demonstrated that the nature of the good or service was a crucial variable in the relationship between scale of production and citizen evaluation of agency performance. …

Policy Analytical Capacity in Changing Governance Contexts: A Structural Equation Model (SEM) Study of Contemporary Canadian Policy Work

Abstract Governments face many challenges in maintaining effective policymaking capacity as their governance activities alter and change. The emergence of a gap between government aspirations and street-level conditions for policy workers can lead to an increased likelihood of poor policy outcomes. Maintaining strong policy capacity in such public services is a critical factor in avoiding various kinds of policy failures. Very little large-scale empirical research has been dedicated to the study of contemporary policy work, however, making it difficult to evaluate competing claims about the impact of changing conditions on practices of policy analysis. Using data derived from three large-scale surveys of Canadian policy analysts conducted during 2007 to 2008, this article develops and tests several key hypotheses about contemporary policy work and its relationship to policy analytical capacity.

Entrepreneurial effectiveness of European universities: An empirical assessment of antecedents and trade-offs

The phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has received considerable attention over the last decades. An entrepreneurial orientation by academia might put regions and nations in an advantageous position in emerging knowledge-intensive fields of economic activity. At the same time, such entrepreneurial orientation requires reconciliation with the scientific missions of academia. Large-scale empirical research on antecedents of the entrepreneurial effectiveness of universities is scarce. This contribution examines the extent to which scientific productivity affect entrepreneurial effectiveness, taking into account the size of universities and the presence of disciplines, as well as the R&D intensity of the regional business environment (BERD). In addition, we assess the occurrence of trade-offs between different transfer mechanisms (contract research, patenting and spin off activity). The data used pertain to 105 European universities. Our findings reveal that scientific productivity is positively associated with entrepreneurial effectiveness. Trade-offs between transfer mechanisms do not reveal themselves; on the contrary, contract research and spin off activities tend to facilitate each other. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Effects of innovativeness and long-term orientation on entrepreneurial intentions: a comparison of business and engineering students

Entrepreneurship has become an increasingly researched area, because it has caught the attention of policy makers as one promising response to sustainable development challenges. Given the emerging character of the field to date, however, most contributions remained conceptual or reported results of case study research. The discussion of sustainable entrepreneurship should therefore benefit from the analysis of large-scale empirical research projects. This paper contributes with a large scale empirical analysis at the individual level, where sustainable development crucially depends on concerned individuals behaving entrepreneurially. Despite this being a crucial pre-condition, its empirical validity has rarely been analysed. Using large-scale survey data to analyse how innovativeness and long-term orientations relate to entrepreneurial intentions, this contribution also compares engineering and business students with regard to this.

A Paradigm Shift in Third Sector Theory and Practice

For the past quarter-century, the field of voluntary action/nonprofit organization/third sector research has been dominated by a paradigm that focuses on organizations certified as tax exempt by the IRS and subject to an inability to distribute economic assets. This definition has facilitated large-scale empirical research but has dropped from visibility a wide range of important community-based voluntary and nonprofit organizations, including in the United States some 9 million grassroots organizations and a wide range of cooperative and mutual benefit organizations. In recent years, a critical literature has developed that challenges this dominant conception. This perspective has taken form under the leadership of the EMES European Research Network and employs a more expansive conception of the third sector than does the conventional American view. That conception is explored and refined in this article, the argument being that the value of the third sector far exceeds the contributions of tax-certified nonprofit organizations.

The effectiveness and efficiency of corporate insolvency law-part 1

“Is inefficient justice unjust?”

What is the value of good medical education research?

As the saying goes, those who pay the piper call the tune. In most countries where research is publicly funded there are national systems for assessing research outputs. Governments, research councils, charitable bodies and other investors all want value for money. Accordingly, the UK is currently undergoing a research assessment exercise (RAE) in a process which will be familiar to researchers in many countries worldwide. Since 1986, the four UK higher education funding bodies have sponsored successive RAEs, the outcomes of which have been used to inform funding allocations and to provide benchmarking for research quality. The current RAE will report its findings towards the end of 2008.

Gender wage inequality in the transitional Chinese economy: A critical review of post-reform research

AbstractChina's economic reform has brought significant changes to its income distribution system. This article critically and systematically reviews a growing but scattered literature on gender wage inequality in post-reform China. It concludes that, due to appropriate rewards of human capital characteristics, market liberation gives rise to a gender wage differential which is similar to or smaller than the differential in most industrialised and developing nations. Moreover, the gender wage gap is smaller in urban industries than in rural ones. Gender wage discrimination that accounts for unexplained components is generally smaller than that of the earnings differential. Increased market competition does not seem to reduce gender wage inequality. However, the current literature is inconclusive, as it examines the gender wage inequality of only a tiny fraction of the country's vast population and geography before China's accelerated reform in the late 1990s. Large-scale empirical research, exploring effe...

Not tokens: reaching a “critical mass” of senior women managers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to outline the findings of a research project involving five Australian universities with over 30 per cent of their senior management positions filled by women. It explores the factors that enabled this to happen and also discusses the responses of the universities to the report.Design/methodology/approachThe research was essentially qualitative, based on 81 interviews, 50 with senior women and 31 with senior men. All those interviewed were in senior positions, from Vice‐Chancellor down to Dean, Director or equivalent. 46 (24 men and 22 women) were academics; 35 (28 women and seven men) were in administrative, support or general staff positions.FindingsInterviewees identified as crucial for the appointment of women having a critical mass of other women in senior positions, opportunities to network, encouragement and support from organisational leaders, friendly and collegial environments and strong organisational commitment to values.Practical implicationsThe paper describes the actions currently being taken by the five universities to build on the research findings and to ensure that their relative success in promoting women is maintained and improved. It considers whether it is possible to transform hierarchical and traditional cultures in order to establish networks of support and to raise questions about gendered assumptions about capacity and ambition.Originality/valueThe paper presents information which draws on the findings of a large scale empirical research project on how women reach senior positions in universities. It also discusses how these findings have been turned into organisational action to improve the position of women.

The Crash of an Airline - The Role of Accounting Choices

Accounting choices have usually been analysed by large-scale empirical research. However, the generality gained from such an approach is at the cost of understanding the rich and complex nature of such choice decisions in real organizations. This article presents the results of an in-depth analysis of the use of accounting choices by a single group of companies over a ten year time span. It is observed that a variety of accounting choices were made in a way that managed the presentation of financial performance so that it was perceived to be better than it actually was. In addition, a number of real decisions were also taken that allowed a more favourable impression to be created, at least for a period of years. The nature of less choices and their consequences only became fully visible following the bankruptcy of the group concerned. From a theoretical stance, the study indicates that accounting choices may be managed as a total package, rather than individually, and that the same choice may move from having an exogenous to an endogenous role. Such an observation has implications for the design and interpretation of large-scale empirical studies. In addition, it is noted that the impact of accounting choices is not confined to audited financial statements, but that they also affect voluntary disclosures, management control systems, and incentive and reward mechanisms. Finally, the change to more transparent accounting standards, such as IAS, is shown to be open to impression management by both its timing and by alterations in voluntary disclosure. The case study indicates the range and complexity of the variables that need to be considered in assessing the impact of accounting standards.

DELIVERING BUSINESS CRITICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS THOUGH APPLICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS: THE NEED FOR A MARKET SEGMENTATION STRATEGY

This paper draws from the findings of a large-scale empirical research program on the global application service provider (ASP) industry funded by research grants from the European Commission (EC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). A conceptual framework consisting of a taxonomy of ASPs is used to demonstrate the different market segmentation strategies adopted by ASPs for competing in this fledgling and turbulent industry. Drawing from empirical research carried out in the US and Europe, the paper evaluates ASP strategies for deploying, hosting, managing and enabling software applications on behalf of their customers. The ASP business model is advocated as an attractive value proposition for SMEs, dot.com companies and other start-up firms seeking hyper-growth. Yet the evidence so far suggests a slow start to the ASP market as few reference sites demonstrating best practice exist. ASPs will therefore need to re-evaluate their strategies if they are to convince potential customers of the benefits of application outsourcing. Against this background, the paper evaluates the benefits and risks of the ASP model.

Marketing strategies that make entrepreneurial firms recession-resistant

The recession of 1990–1991 adversely affected nearly every industry in the United States, and entrepreneurial manufacturing firms were among those hardest hit by the recession. The failure rate among this group by mid-year 1991 had risen 37% from the previous year. Thus, recessions pose a serious threat to the survival of entrepreneurial firms. Understanding how the business cycle influences performance and what strategies are effective in such turbulent times has practical value for managers of entrepreneurial firms. In this paper we report a large-scale empirical research study involving subjective and financial information from 118 publicly traded U.S. manufacturing firms. The participating firms are involved in technologically demanding and highly innovative industry segments: Industrial and Computer Equipment; Electrical Equipment and Components; and Measuring, Analysis, and Control Instruments. None of the firms has achieved a market share of more than one half of one percent (< 0.5%). The goal of the study was to determine the components of a marketing strategy that enabled a firm in these industries to withstand the negative financial consequences of a recession. We find that, in these industries, a company's marketing strategies preceding a recession strongly impact the extent of economic downturn on the firm, and influence its odds of a timely and complete recovery. Our specific prescriptions follow: First, maintain marketing activities in the core business as assurance against recession. Increasing sales and advertising, increasing breadth of production, and increasing geographic coverage improve performance during both the peak and the contraction of the business cycle. Second, during the peak period, cautiously expand with an emphasis on marketing efficiency. Increasing the number of channels of distribution and cutting price have a negative effect unless accompanied by sales-force performance measurement. A simple emphasis on incentives and efficiency alone hurts a firm as a recession hits. All of these prescriptions run counter to existing views that suggest that recession simply requires cutbacks and retrenchment. Recessions seem to be different from other threats to firm viability, and marketing activities appear to help pull the firm through a macroeconomic downturn.

Aspects of negative numbers in the early 17th century

This paper argues that the questions, posed by researchers in the field of didactics of mathematics, require new historical research which mainly concerns the problems related to the emergence and evolution of concepts. Motivated by recent historico-didactical studies on negative numbers, the author explores two different types of problems through which these numbers started being used systematically in mathematics. The first problem deals with the correspondence between the terms of an arithmetical and a geometrical progression, which constitutes the theoretical basis of logarithms; the second deals with the application of algebraic syntactical ruies in the theory of equations. In the specific context of these problems, concepts, such as ‘negative logarithm’ or ‘negative root’, were established in the early 17th century, long before the appearance of a general concept of ‘negative quantity’ in mathematical textbooks. The analysis of these problems reveals the conventional character of negative numbers and poses certain questions about the meaning of the various concrete models, traditionally employed in their teaching (via temperature, debits and credits, etc.). Recent, large-scale empirical research has shown a major percentage of failure in understanding negative numbers and their operations; this fact is related to the meanings attributed to negative numbers during their introduction at school. The matter of revising traditional teaching models is considered in connection with a constructive learning hypothesis; there is a need for new problem-situations, which entirely justify the meaning of the concept that must be used and constructed by the pupil and allow a fruitful interaction with it. The case of negative numbers provides an illuminating example of the role historical problems can play in the creation of situations like these.

Corporatism as Macro-Structuring

Abstract A frayed theoretical discussion has been taking place in most Common Market countries since the mid-1970s, and it has been followed by large-scale empirical research. These studies demonstrate the unforeseen importance of socio-political formations which cannot be comprehended by frameworks based on constitutional law and its understanding of a sound political order. On the contrary, standard constitutional accounts often treat these formations as relics of pre-modern regimes. In fact, however, corporatist arrangements envision socio-political controls not anticipated by the constitutional state. There is an unofficial interaction between associations and interest groups on the one hand, and the government and parties on the other. This has important ramifications for political theory and especially for the conceptualization of democracy.

Uses of the 1980 census for Hispanic health services research.

The 1980 Census data provide a valuable resource for health services research on Hispanics. Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the United States and yet there is a paucity of large-scale empirical research on their health care and access needs. This paper describes how the census can assist in: 1) estimating the overall health care needs of this group, 2) identifying target groups within the Hispanic population who may have special health care problems (e.g., children, elderly, pregnant women, etc.); and 3) using other data sources to improve the quality of studies carried out on Hispanics. It also discusses problems in using the census for Hispanic health services research and some strategies for dealing with these problems.