Macro-level Patterns Research Articles

The role and value of professional membership for emergency nurses: What are the key elements?

Granovetter (1973) wrote on the ‘Strength of Weak Ties’, even though published all those years ago, there was value and recognition placed on the strength of smaller group interactions and how they can impact on more macro level patterns, the same sociological theory holds true today. There are strengths in professional memberships, whether they are conducted on a small or large scale. They are powerful vessels for nurses to have impactful interactions. We recognize that professional memberships for nursing are available globally, whether that is through a local, national, or international organization. They offer a broad range of opportunities including education, bursaries, conferences, networking, and leadership opportunities. They are seen to connect and engage with peers and in some countries professional organizations also drive change, politically lobby, or even offer professional indemnity insurance or union support. Despite a strong presence in nursing professional organizations, the evidence shows that membership is declining or staying stagnant, and it is growing more difficult to bring nurses together through these channels. So, the question must be asked, ‘Why do nurses not strongly engage with professional organizations?’ This study focuses on emergency nurses to gain a greater understanding of drivers for professional membership and engagement.

Detectable use of ENSO information on crop production in Southern Africa

People have known that El Niño events are associated with low rainfall in Southern Africa for a century, and seasonal rainfall forecasts are now available in agricultural advisories for farmers. While there is abundant theory as to how farmers might (or should) use seasonal rainfall information on their farms, little is known about whether this information has been widely used or has had widespread benefit. In this study, we use subnational data on cropping area and yield to see if we can detect any macro-level patterns in agricultural choices or outcomes that are related to knowledge of the El Niño Southern Oscillation or seasonal forecast information in Southern Africa. We find that in Lesotho and parts of South Africa, planted area of maize and sorghum is reduced when there is a dry start to the season and an El Niño event is apparent at the time of planting. Similarly, we find that in both Lesotho and most provinces of South Africa, drought years associated with El Niño have worse yields than drought years that are not associated with El Niño (controlling for rainfall). This association could indicate that people are discouraged during El Niño years by the potential for drought, and they might be reducing cropping area, reducing agricultural investments, or turning to other income-generating activities. We are unable to detect a relationship between yields and the accuracy of seasonal rainfall forecasts, therefore we are unable to observe any additional yield benefit when more accurate seasonal forecast information is available.

Publicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions

We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate scepticism – and the aggressiveness of climate-related tweets – was greater in states with higher per capita carbon emissions. This pattern remained significant after controlling for political conservatism, GDP per capita, education, and gender, and was replicated across 126 nations from around the world. The findings are consistent with a vested interest hypothesis—misinformation around climate change is most likely to be distributed in regions where there is high fossil fuel reliance, and where the economic stakes of acknowledging climate change are high. Understanding the macro-level patterns that are implicated in climate scepticism can help inform structural interventions for those seeking a low-carbon future.

Populist attitudes and support for democracy among Latin American bureaucrats

Despite macro-level patterns that link populists in power with democratic backsliding, it is unclear how populist attitudes correlate with attitudes about democracy among individuals. Scholars have only recently turned their attention to this issue and produced inconclusive results. Using our unique survey of Latin American bureaucrats, we investigate how populism operates among bureaucrats, a set of actors with a crucial role in democratic governance. We analyze each of three dimensions of populism separately (anti-elitism, pro-people orientation and Manicheanism). Building on recent scholarship finding that populists are dissatisfied democrats, we examine the relationship between attitudes about each dimension of populism and satisfaction with and support for democracy. We extend current scholarship by deploying two measures of satisfaction with and four measures of support for democracy, including support for checks on the executive. We find that those scoring high on underlying dimensions of populism rate the quality of democracy lower but are not less satisfied with the system in their countries. We also find that those with pro-people attitudes consistently support democracy, including checks on the executive. Those with a Manichean outlook, in contrast, are less supportive of democracy and favor increased executive powers. These complexities suggest the need for more research on the concept of populism, as well as supporting the need for understanding how attitudes among important social groups, particularly institutional actors, may differ from the overall population.

Assessing strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making and risk in a livestock production chain through experimental simulation platforms.

This paper provides a research summary of a series of serious games and simulations that form the basis of an experimental platform for the study of human decision-making and behavior associated with biosecurity across complex livestock production chains. This platform is the first of its kind to address the challenges associated with scaling micro-behavior of biosecurity decision-making to macro-patterns of disease spread across strategic, tactical and operational levels, capturing the roles that facility managers and front-line workers play in making biosecurity decisions under risk and uncertainty. Informational and incentive treatments are tested within each game and simulation. Behavioral theories are used to explain these findings. Results from serious games in the form of behavioral probability distributions are then used to simulate disease incidence and spread across a complex production chain, demonstrating how micro-level behaviors contribute to larger macro-level patterns. In the case of this study, the propensity to adopt micro-level biosecurity practices are applied to a network percolation disease spread model. By presenting the suite of companion models of behavior and disease spread we are able to capture scaling dynamics of complex systems, and in the process, better understand how individual behaviors impact whole systems.

Macro Patterns of Employee Mobility: Learning from Large-Scale Employment Data

This symposium intends to present five studies investigating drivers and directions of employee mobility at the macro-level. The goal of this symposium is to connect macro-level patterns and micro-level mechanisms of employee mobility and foster a research conversation across disciplinary fields, including careers, human resource management, and organizational behavior. In addition, by bringing together diverse projects using large-scale longitudinal data, this symposium will allow researchers to discuss opportunities, challenges, and methodological concerns that arise when working with such data. Over the past decades, careers have transformed from those developing inside organizations and governed by organizational rules and norms to those unfolding within labor markets and characterized by the variety of job transitions and flexibility of work arrangements (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; Osterman & Burton, 2005). These changes raised a number of questions and stimulated the development of several research streams. They led to the emergence of new conceptualizations of career (Guan et al., 2019; Sullivan & Baruch, 2009), including recent models of sustainable career (De Vos, Van Der Heijden, Akkermans, 2020). They made scholars to reevaluate the employee-employer relationship (Bonet, Cappelli, Hamori, 2013; Cappelli & Keller, 2013) and reinforced the problems of talent management and retention (Bidwell, 2017; Cappelli & Keller, 2014). Given the importance of fit between individual characteristics and broader organizational context (Ployhart et al., 2014; Weller et al., 2019), growing diversity of individual work experience also adds new challenges to the effective matching of workers to jobs. What binds employees and employers in the modern labor markets? What drives employee mobility? Why do people stay or leave, where do they go, and what if they come back? The papers comprising this symposium aim at answering these questions by looking at the longitudinal employment data from five different countries: France, Germany, South Korea, Spain, and Sweden. Testing the theory with such large-scale data facilitates the identification of the most general patterns of labor mobility that might stay unnoticed while analyzing examples from a single organization or survey data from a specific population. Combining studies conducted in a diverse set of countries adds richness to the topics discussed. Collectively, these papers demonstrate what we can learn about individual behavior from the macro-patterns of employee mobility. Corporate career development opportunities and employee retention Presenter: Kira Choi; EMLYON Business School Crisis-related Wage Cuts and Employee Turnover: Who Leaves? Why? Where Do They Go? Presenter: Halil Sabanci; Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Presenter: Marta M Elvira; IESE Business School How Boomerang Mobility versus Mobility to a New Employer Relates to Career Sustainability Presenter: Katja Dlouhy; U. of Mannheim Presenter: Ariane Froidevaux; U. of Texas At Arlington Question of Fit: Managerial Experience and Organizational Design Presenter: Roxana Barbulescu; HEC Paris Presenter: Federica De Stefano; HEC Paris Presenter: Olga Ivanova; USI Lugano Multiple Job Affiliations and Entrepreneurship Presenter: Chanchal Balachandran; U. of Liverpool Management School Presenter: Filippo Carlo Wezel; USI Lugano

Strength, Stamina, and Structural Violence in the Social Sciences

Stereotypical portrayals of the academy depict a progressive and inclusive institution, particularly in the social sciences, disciplines that engage with social and political topics including inequality. This article, however, details the extent to which the formal structures and informal culture of academic social science continue to reflect men’s bodies and lived experiences. Specifically, I draw on autoethnographic observations and personal reflections to demonstrate the valorization of extreme bodily strength and stamina, principal components of contemporary masculinity seemingly at odds with the scholarly endeavors of the ivory tower. Additionally, I reflect on the harms proliferated in this environment including physical, emotional, and economic violence; trauma; and the persistence of macro-level patterns of inequality.

Empirical characterisation of agents’ spatial behaviour in pedestrian movement simulation

Route choice behaviour is a key factor in determining pedestrian movement flows throughout the urban space. Agent-based modelling, a simulation paradigm that allows modelling individual behaviour mechanisms to observe the emergence of macro-level patterns, has not employed empirical data regarding route choice behaviour in cities or accommodated heterogeneity. The aim of this paper is to present an empirically based Agent-Based Model (ABM) that accounts for behavioural heterogeneity in pedestrian route choice strategies, to simulate the movement of pedestrians in cities. We designed a questionnaire to observe to what degree people employ salient urban elements (local and global landmarks, regions, and barriers) and road costs (road distance, cumulative angular change) and to empirically characterise the agent behaviour in our ABM. We hypothesised that a heterogeneous ABM configuration based on the construction of agent typologies from empirical data would portray a more plausible picture of pedestrian movement flows than a homogeneous configuration, based on the same data, or a random configuration. The city of Münster (DE) was used as a case study. From a sample of 301 subjects, we obtained six clusters that differed in relation to the role of global elements (distant landmarks, barriers, and regions) and meaningful local elements along the route. The random configuration directed the agents towards natural elements and the streets of the historical centre. The empirically based configurations resulted in lower pedestrian volumes along roads designed for cars (25% decrease) but higher concentrations along the city Promenade and the lake (40% increase); based on our knowledge, we deem these results more plausible. Minor differences were identified between the heterogeneous and homogeneous configurations. These findings indicate that the inclusion of heterogeneity does not make a difference in terms of global patterns. Yet, we demonstrated that simulation models of pedestrian movement in cities should be at least based on empirical data at the average sample-level to inform urban planners about areas prone to high volumes of pedestrians.

Exclusion from Social Relations in Later Life: Micro- and Macro-Level Patterns and Correlations in a European Perspective.

Older adults face particular risks of exclusion from social relationships (ESR) and are especially vulnerable to its consequences. However, research so far has been limited to specific dimensions, countries, and time points. In this paper, we examine the prevalence and micro- and macro-level predictors of ESR among older adults (60+) using two waves of data obtained four years apart across 14 European countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We consider four ESR indicators (household composition, social networks, social opportunities, and loneliness) and link them to micro-level (age, gender, socioeconomic factors, health, and family responsibilities) and national macro-level factors (social expenditures, unmet health needs, individualism, social trust, and institutional trust). Findings reveal a northwest to southeast gradient, with the lowest rates of ESR in the stronger welfare states of Northwest Europe. The high rates of ESR in the southeast are especially pronounced among women. Predictably, higher age and fewer personal resources (socioeconomic factors and health) increase the risk of all ESR dimensions for both genders. Macro-level factors show significant associations with ESR beyond the effect of micro-level factors, suggesting that national policies and cultural and structural characteristics may play a role in fostering sociability and connectivity and, thus, reduce the risk of ESR in later life.

Individual attitude change and societal dynamics: Computational experiments with psychological theories.

We present an agent-based model for studying the societal implications of attitude change theories. Various psychological theories of persuasive communication at the individual level are implemented as simulation experiments. The model allows us to investigate the effects of contagion and assimilation, motivated cognition, polarity, source credibility, and idiosyncratic attitude formation. Simulations show that different theories produce different characteristic macrolevel patterns. Contagion and assimilation are central mechanisms for generating consensus, however, contagion generates a radicalized consensus. Motivated cognition causes societal polarization or the fragmentation of attitudes. Polarity and source credibility have comparatively little effect on the societal distribution of attitudes. We discuss how the simulations provide a bridge between microlevel psychological theories and the aggregated macrolevel studied by sociology. This approach enables new types of evidence for evaluating psychological theory to complement experimental approaches, thus answering calls to enhance the role of coherent and formalized theory in psychological science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Constraints on policy learning: designing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in Pennsylvania

Much policy diffusion and learning research examines macro-level patterns of policy spread. However, micro-level case studies can reveal nuances in how learning occurs, particularly when innovation originates within the executive branch, not the legislature. This case study of Pennsylvania’s effort to join the regional greenhouse gas initiative (RGGI) illuminates the legal constraints faced by administrators who must innovate within the bounds of existing authority. The study also shows that legal constraints can reduce an agency’s ability to maximize the political durability of major policy reform. The case yields insights for both policy designers and scholars of policy diffusion and learning.

The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution.

Modern phylogenetic methods are increasingly being used to address questions about macro-level patterns in cultural evolution. These methods can illuminate the unobservable histories of cultural traits and identify the evolutionary drivers of trait change over time, but their application is not without pitfalls. Here, we outline the current scope of research in cultural tree thinking, highlighting a toolkit of best practices to navigate and avoid the pitfalls and ‘abuses' associated with their application. We emphasize two principles that support the appropriate application of phylogenetic methodologies in cross-cultural research: researchers should (1) draw on multiple lines of evidence when deciding if and which types of phylogenetic methods and models are suitable for their cross-cultural data, and (2) carefully consider how different cultural traits might have different evolutionary histories across space and time. When used appropriately phylogenetic methods can provide powerful insights into the processes of evolutionary change that have shaped the broad patterns of human history.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution'.

The inconsequence of negative statehouse evaluations on ballot measures: Evidence from survey experiments

Existing scholarship about ballot measure voting and elite cuegivers suggests that the express endorsement of an unpopular legislature on a statewide ballot measure will depress voter support. Despite seven tests across two decades on both high- and low-profile measures, it did not. This null finding is in keeping with macro-level patterns of strong public support for the more than 4000 legislative referrals approved by voters in the past century. Consequently, we propose that the influence of an elite endorsement on voter behavior is more complicated than past research suggests. Specifically, in keeping with the seminal observation made by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (1995) that American political cynicism is more a matter of distaste for certain political practices than for actual political institutions, we suspect that when voters are overwhelmed by policy proposals that are both unfamiliar and complex, they may find assurance in the imprimatur of their General Assembly.

Gross Labor Market Flows, Self-Employment, and Unemployment Insurance

In the data, entrepreneurship contributes to the micro and macro-level patterns of gross labor market flows and the selection into that occupation is highly responsive to labor market policy changes. Using an occupational choice model of employment, unemployment, and entrepreneurship, we show that search frictions over all three occupations and a technology letting entrepreneurs produce with their own labor, business capital, or both, are pivotal in rationalizing observed aggregate gross flows and behaviors along the wealth and ability dimensions. The responsiveness of our model flows to variations in unemployment insurance generosity is consistent with US empirical estimates. Changes in the relative riskiness of occupations drive this responsiveness. In turn, beyond the direct effects on unemployment, large reallocations between entrepreneurship and employment appear, shaping aggregate occupational shares. Using our framework, we show that the successive unemployment insurance extensions during the Great Recession have decreased the entrepreneurship rate by 0.4pp.

Revising an implicational hierarchy for the meanings of ideophones, with special reference to Japonic

Abstract An elicitation task was conducted with speakers of Japonic varieties to investigate whether stimuli of varying sensory modalities (e.g. audio, visual, tactile etc.) were more or less likely to elicit ideophones or iconic words. Stimuli representing sounds, movements, shapes and textures were most likely to elicit ideophones, and this is posited to reflect the relative ease or naturalness with which these domains can be mapped iconically to speech. The results mirror macro-level patterns of linguistic diversity, as these are also domains in which ideophones are most widely attested cross-linguistically. The findings call for the revision of a previously constructed implicational hierarchy for the semantic development of ideophone systems, adding to it the categories of FORM and TEXTURE as domains in which ideophones are most likely to develop, after SOUND and MOVEMENT. Independent evidence for the revised hierarchy comes from a semantic analysis of the elicited ideophones, where it was found that domains early in the hierarchy were more likely to be sources for semantic extension, while later domains were more likely to be targets. These findings are expected to be replicable for other languages, and offer exciting new directions for research into the semantic typology of ideophones.

Social Support for Digital Inclusion: Towards a Typology of Social Support Patterns

This article contributes to a better understanding of patterns of social support in relation to digital inequalities. Based on an extensive qualitative study, the diversity of support networks and supports seeking patterns are unveiled. A typology of six patterns of help-seeking is presented and described: the support-deprived, the community-supported, the supported through substitution, the network-supported, the vicarious learners, and the self-supported. The article also critically engages with the often unnuanced academic literature on social support. The research and the typology reveal that the quality of support, as well as the availability of potential or actual support, is not only influenced by socio-economic factors. Rather, the strength of the relationship and the level of intimacy between individuals is an important predictor of support-seeking. As such, this article shows that mechanisms of in/exclusion are highly social, as they entail a diversity of formal and informal support-seeking patterns, which in turn have an important influence on the adoption and use of digital media. The article argues that understanding such mechanisms is rooted in reconciling micro-level interactions to macro-level patterns of inequalities. To show the specificity of social support within digital inequalities research, and to demarcate the concept from definitions of other academic disciplines, the concept of social support for digital inclusion is introduced. It is defined as the aid (emotional, instrumental, and informational) that an individual receives from his/her network in his/her use of digital technologies.

How morality politics determine morality policy output – partisan effects on morality policy change

ABSTRACT Results on whether party ideology influences the regulation of morally sensitive issues remain inconclusive. This is partly due to insufficient theoretical specifications of the link between party ideology and morality policy output that do not consider that different directions of policy reform give rise to distinct politics, although this insight has ranked prominently within the literature on comparative political economy as the ‘New Politics’ that characterize welfare state retrenchment. By integrating this insight into the ‘Two Worlds’ framework of morality politics, this paper achieves two things: First, it explains macro-level patterns of partisan impacts on the occurrence of permissive and restrictive reforms across six morality policy areas (abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, pornography, and prostitution) in 16 West European countries between 1960 and 2010. Second, it accounts for the micro-level political dynamics that characterize restrictive reforms adopted by Christian Democratic governments, which are dominated by blame-avoidance.

The Resurgence of Ideology in Indonesia: Political Islam, Aliran and Political Behaviour

The 2019 Indonesian presidential elections indicate that ideology played an important role in voting behaviour, as aggregate subnational results seem to mirror the mid-1950s, when Indonesian politics was organised around ideological and partisan groups known as aliran. However, the extent to which these macro-level patterns are rooted in real ideological divisions among Indonesian voters is an open question. This article analyses an original survey specifically designed to measure aliran identities, ideological orientations and political preferences of ordinary Indonesians. Findings indicate that aliran identities are still present and associated with party choice but only loosely connected with political ideology. Most notably, however, political Islam is associated with important political attitudes and behaviours. Islamist Indonesians are less likely to support liberal understandings of democracy, more likely to see economic issues as policy priorities and more likely to support economic redistribution and regional autonomy. This suggests that ideology should receive greater attention in the study of Indonesian politics.

Rules of the Game: Exponential Random Graph Models of a Gang Homicide Network

AbstractGang members frequently refer to street life as a “game” (or “The Game”): a social milieu in which status is lost or won by the way individuals and groups manage their reputations. Like other games, successfully participating in the street game may demand adherence to certain rules, such as the willingness to violently redress threats, the avoidance of “weak” behaviors, and the protection of one’s allies. This paper draws on detailed police records of violent exchanges among gangs in Chicago to ascertain which rules of the game in fact contribute to the relative social standing of groups. Specifically, we use exponential random graph models to identify the underlying micro-arrangements among gangs that collectively generate macro-level patterns of homicide. Findings illuminate a large and diverse array of generative mechanisms based on gangs’ attributes and structural positions. However, these mechanisms vary depending on which two gangs are at hand; provide evidence of a contested hierarchy with few intergroup alliances; and are surprisingly inconsistent over time. As all gangs engage in local and ongoing struggles for dominance—and as the rules constantly change—the street game is continually played but never truly won.

Steven F. Railsback and Volker Grimm, Agent-Based and Individual-Based Modeling. A Practical Introduction

You have probably encountered the acronym ABM before, but in the unlikely event that you have not: Agent-based modeling (which is what ABM stands for) is a formal modeling technique in which complex (social) systems are represented on the level of individual agents and their mutual interactions, seeking to identify by means of simulation analysis how macro-level patterns emerge from agent interactions. In recent years, agent-based modelers (such as myself) have become eager and proud to procl...