Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Commitment and Turnover in Resort Jobs

Self-reported data were analyzed from 300 non-supervisory resort employees to evaluate whether dealing with customers and a bona fide career interest would significantly increase the predictability of organizational commitment and turnover beyond that of resort job satisfaction. Voluntary turnover was tracked fora period of one year. Dealing with customers was significant in its positive correlation to organizational commitment. Resort job satisfaction and a bona fide career interest interacted when regressed on turnover such that those employees who were low on both variables were almost twice as likely to leave their jobs than those who were high on either one or both variables.
Multidimensional and mediating relationships between TQM, role conflict and role ambiguity: A role theory perspective

This study examines the multidimensional and mediating relationships between six total quality management (TQM) practices, role conflict and role ambiguity. Survey data are collected from 422 employees from ISO-certified firms in Malaysia. With the use of structural equation modelling, the findings indicate that higher levels of process management and information analysis lead to lower levels of role conflict. The presence of a quality-oriented human resource focus induces higher levels of role conflict. Strategic planning is negatively related to role ambiguity. Customer focus and role conflict are found to be independently and positively related to role ambiguity. Role conflict is found to be a full mediator between the following: human resource focus and role ambiguity; process management and role ambiguity; information analysis and role ambiguity. The research model serves as a diagnostic tool for the organisational administrators to manage the individual employee stress behaviour by leveraging current TQM practices, and fine-tune the right characteristics to reduce undesirable role conflict and role ambiguity. The study and its findings have filled a research gap in the literature of TQM and psychological well-being of employees. The inclusion of mediating effects in this study is an important aspect that other studies have not considered.
EARNINGS MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE: AN EXAMINATION OF EXTRAORDINARY ITEM REPORTING

This study examines the empirical relation between a three-way classification of corporate ownership structure and earnings management through the use of extraordinary item (EI) reporting. The EI reporting decisions examined are those made during 1960-1966, a time period when US reporting standards allowed considerable management discretion with respect to both the classification of EIs and their placement in the financial statements (i.e., income. versus retained earnings statement). Overall, the results provide strong support for income-increasing behavior by non-owner managers. Importantly, the results also suggest that the three-way ownership classification scheme used in this study is superior to the dichotomous owner-controlled/managercontrolled classification typically used in accounting studies.
Comparing Public and Private Schools: The Puzzling Role of Selectivity Bias

Recent articles using the same data and variants of the same estimation technique report conflicting estimates of the relative quality of education provided by public and Catholic schools. This article explains the reasons for the conflict. In so doing, the article clarifies the assumptions underlying the increasingly popular two-step methods for controlling selectivity bias and highlights the hazards of using these methods when the assumptions are not satisfied. The article also illustrates an alternative method for detecting the presence of selectivity bias.
Earnings Management, Capital Structure and the Role of Institutional Environments

This paper examines the effect of earnings management on financial leverage and how this relation is influenced by institutional environments by employing a large panel of 25,777 firms across 37 countries spanning the years 1989–2009. We find that firms with high earnings management activities are associated with high financial leverage. More importantly, this positive relation is attenuated by strong institutional environments. Our results lend strong support to the notions that (1) both corporate debt and institutional environments can be served as external control mechanisms to alleviate the agency cost of free cash flow; and (2) it is less costly to rely on institutional environments than debt. After meticulously addressing the possible endogeneity issues and conducting various robustness tests, our main conclusions remain confirmed.
Primary adenoid cystic carcinoma of sweat glands in vulva: Report of an unusual case and review of the literature

Adenoid cystic carcinoma arising from the vulvar sweat glands is a rare malignancy of the female genital tract. We report a case of adenoid cystic carcinoma of sweat glands occurring in the left labia majora of a 52‐year‐old female patient. The patient underwent radical hemivulvectomy and left inguinal lymph node dissection with negative surgical margins and negative inguinal lymph node metastasis. Then, four episodes of combined chemotherapy without further radiotherapy were given. However, the tumor recurred after 3 months. Currently, the patient has been followed up for 2 years with no distant metastasis. According to our experience, although the tumor has a high tendency of local recurrence after resection, an acceptable survival time of the patient can be achieved with primary surgery.
Examining differences in competitive intelligence practice: China, Japan, and the West

This article identifies the state of competitive intelligence (CI) in Asia—specifically, two of its most prominent economic powers, China and Japan. Comparisons with Western, mainly U.S. practice, are made, particularly where data and management research from those countries supports this approach. In terms of current practice, CI in Japan is more developed than in China, although China continues to devote increasing attention and resources to the area. Decision makers in multinational companies, competing in China or Japan, or with firms that originate there, should be aware of the competitive implications emanating from their utilization of CI. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Prenatal therapy for fetal cardiac disorders

Abstract Fetal cardiac abnormalities are some of the commonest congenital disorders seen in prenatal life. They can be anatomical or functional and can develop de novo or as a consequence of either maternal or fetal disease. Untreated, morbidity and mortality rates are high for hypoplastic left heart disorders and for some fetal tachy and bradyarrhythmias. Optimum management strategies are often not clear because of the lack of knowledge about the precise natural history of some of these conditions. Prenatal therapy ranges from invasive fetal cardiac intervention to maternal administration of drugs for transplacental transfer to the fetus. This comprehensive review covers many fetal cardiac disorders and various prenatal therapeutic options that are available.
Option-Implied Volatilities and Stock Returns: Evidence from Industry-Neutral Portfolios

Recent studies demonstrate the profitability of stock portfolios constructed according to implied volatility measures inferred from option prices. This article examines industry effects on such portfolios’ performance. Results show that quintile portfolios constructed using volatility skew and volatility spread are subject to substantial industry effects, which are particularly strong during market turbulence. The authors form industry-neutral portfolios and compare their performances to those of full-universe portfolios that do not consider industry exposure. Results show significant improvement when portfolio strategies are implemented in an industry-neutral manner, based on either volatility skew or volatility spread.
Corporate social responsibility: the 3C‐SR model

Purpose – To develop a model that bridges the gap between CSR definitions and strategy and offers guidance to managers on how to connect socially committed organisations with the growing numbers of ethically aware consumers to simultaneously achieve economic and social objectives. Design/methodology/approach – This paper offers a critical evaluation of the theoretical foundations of corporate responsibility (CR) and proposes a new strategic approach to CR, which seeks to overcome the limitations of normative definitions. To address this perceived issue, the authors propose a new processual model of CR, which they refer to as the 3C-SR model. Findings – The 3C-SR model can offer practical guidelines to managers on how to connect with the growing numbers of ethically aware consumers to simultaneously achieve economic and social objectives. It is argued that many of the redefinitions of CR for a contemporary audience are normative exhortations (“calls to arms”) that fail to provide managers with the conceptual resources to move from “ought” to “how”. Originality/value – The 3C-SR model offers a novel approach to CR in so far as it addresses strategy, operations and markets in a single framework.
Seafood Purchasing Preferences of Hawaii Chefs: Comparing Actual Purchase to Stated Preferences From Conjoint Choice Experiment

This study investigated if Hawaii chefs use wild seafood products over farm-raised and local over imports. Chefs were asked to estimate their purchases for shrimp, tuna, mahimahi, and salmon. Chefs were also asked to choose products within conjoint choice experiments to indirectly determine their preferences. Price is the most important attribute for shrimp. Hawaii chefs would prefer wild and farm-raised local, fresh shrimp if it were competitively priced over low-priced imported and frozen alternatives. This result can be useful for the shrimp aquaculture industry in Hawaii. The low importance of production method when purchasing seafood should be further explored.
Do Stringent Environmental Regulations Reduce International Competitiveness? Evidence from an Inter-industry A nalysis

An increasing interest has emerged among policy makers and academics on the question "Do stringent environmental regulations lead to loss of international competitiveness in terms of declining exports and increasing imports compared with those from the countries which have lower environmental standards and regulations? ". This paper examines this issue by conducting an inter-industry analysis of New Zealand manufacturing industries. By analysing the patterns and determinants of comparative advantage of 109 industries over the last 13 years, we found no strong evidence to suggest that environmental standards lead to loss of competitiveness.
An horizon scan of biogeography

The opportunity to reflect broadly on the accomplishments, prospects, and reach of a field may present itself relatively infrequently. Each biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society showcases ideas solicited and developed largely during the preceding year, by individuals or teams from across the breadth of the discipline. Here, we highlight challenges, developments, and opportunities in biogeography from that biennial synthesis. We note the realized and potential impact of rapid data accumulation in several fields, a renaissance for inter-disciplinary research, the importance of recognizing the evolution-ecology continuum across spatial and temporal scales and at different taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional levels, and re-exploration of classical assumptions and hypotheses using new tools. However, advances are taxonomically and geographically biased, key theoretical frameworks await tools to handle, or strategies to simplify, the biological complexity seen in empirical systems. Current threats to biodiversity require unprecedented integration of knowledge and development of predictive capacity that may enable biogeography to unite its descriptive and hypothetico-deductive branches and establish a greater role within and outside academia. Copyright Information: Copyright 2013 by the article author(s). This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution4.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Value Relevance of Financial Statements in the Venture Capital Market

This study examines the value relevance of financial statement data and nonfinancial statement information within and across the pre‐IPO venture capital and post‐IPO public equity markets. For a sample of U.S. biotechnology firms, I find that financial statements are highly value‐relevant in the venture capital market, and that the signs of the associations between equity values and financial statement data in that market are similar to those in the public equity market, despite significant structural differences between the two. I also find that the value relevance of financial statements generally increases as firms mature, consistent with financial statements capturing the increasing intensity of assets‐in‐place relative to future investment options. In contrast, the value relevance of nonfinancial statement information decreases as firms mature, indicating that, in a dynamic sense, financial statements and nonfinancial statement information of venture‐backed pre‐IPO biotech companies are information s.
Exchange boson dynamics in cuprates: optical conductivity of HgBa_2CuO_4+delta.

The electron-boson spectral density function I;{2}chi(Omega) responsible for carrier scattering of the high temperature superconductor HgBa_{2}CuO_{4+delta} (T_{c}=90 K) is calculated from new data on the optical scattering rate. A maximum entropy technique is used. Published data on HgBa_{2}Ca_{2}Cu_{3}O_{8+delta} (T_{c}=130 K) are also inverted and these new results are put in the context of other known cases. All spectra (with two notable exceptions) show a peak at an energy (Omega_{r}) proportional to the superconducting transition temperature Omega_{r} approximately 6. 3k_{B}T_{c}. This charge channel relationship follows closely the magnetic resonance seen by polarized neutron scattering, Omega_{r};{neutron} approximately 5. 4k_{B}T_{c}. The amplitudes of both peaks decrease strongly with increasing temperature. In some cases, the peak at Omega_{r} is weak and the spectrum can have additional maxima and a background extending up to several hundred meV.
TUC Organizing Academy 10 years on: what has been the impact on British unions?

The year 2008 saw the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) Organizing Academy which was designed to train a new cadre of union officials. The aim was to develop a culture of organizing that could help to transform the decline in trade union membership by bringing in new members who had been trained to be active within their unions. Through in-depth interviews and a survey of graduates of the Academy we look at the impact this project has had on individuals, their unions, and the wider union movement. We are particularly keen to give voice to the graduates as they have been charged with the difficult task of transforming the British trade union movement. We find evidence that trained organizers continue to be influential within their unions, but that many (although by no means all) get stuck in relatively junior positions because of the lack of a specialist career structure. This inevitably constrains their influence. The division between ‘servicing’ and ‘organizing’ functions is an almost inevitable consequence of the establishment of a separate, specialist organizing role and can also cause tensions and constrain the spread of organizing practices within unions. Despite this, there is evidence of widespread adoption of basic organizing practices, although more strategic organizing is still far less common. More widely, there is strong evidence of organizers developing new and influential networks between unions, and of individual unions implementing specialist organizing training. Despite this mixed evaluation, we argue that the creation of the Academy has had a considerable impact on British unions and has fostered important and innovative organizing approaches that would probably not have emerged otherwise.
Privatization in Serbia - Success or Failure? Observing the Progress and the Macroeconomic Effects of a Delayed Privatization Process

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 signified a new era in European history. Most of the former socialist countries started a process of transition from centrally planned to the market economy already in 1990. Many studies have been undertaken with the aim of analyzing the effects of privatization and transition in former Soviet countries, but there is significantly less literature about privatization progress in former Yugoslav countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to fill in the gap in the existing literature by focusing on exploring the progress and effects of the privatization process in Serbia. This study will provide the reader with an insight into the progress and effects of privatization process in Serbia. It will also give a further understand about the reasons behind the delay of reforms and how that affected the success of Serbia’s privatization in the last ten years. Finally, the study will also throw light on the present situation and what reforms need to be more emphasized in the future.
Information Technology and Quantitative Management , ITQM 2013 Improving Lap-TSVM with successive overrelaxation and di ff erential evolution

Twin support vector machine (TWSVM) is an excellent kernel-based tool for supervised classification [1–4]. It aims at generating two nonparallel hyperplanes such that each hyperplane is closer to one of two classes and as far as possible from the other one. Compared to SVM [5], TWSVM is competitive in terms of performance whereas it is around four times faster than standard SVM. However, the generalization performance of TWSVM is very dependent on whether there is sufficient labeled data information. In many real world learning problems [6], e.g. natural language parsing, spam filtering, video surveillance and protein 3D structure prediction, the acquisition of labeled data is usually costly, whereas the collection of unlabeled data is much easier. To deal with the problems of large amounts of unlabeled data along with relative few labeled data, semi-supervised classification (SSC) paradigm has been proposed in recent years, and comprehensive reviews can be found in [6–8]. Among these, the well-known SSC paradigm is the elegant manifold regularization (MR) framework [9, 10]. In the MR framework, two regularization terms are introduced: the one concentrates on the complexity of classifier in the Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS) and the other enforces the classifier along the intrinsic manifold
Age validation and growth variability of Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus off the Pacific coast of northern Japan

This study examined age and growth of Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus off the Pacific coast of northern Japan, and determined whether the growth patterns of male and female fish in northern (40–41°N) and southern (37–38°15′N) waters differ. In total 8095 specimens were collected between January 1999 and December 2005. Zonation consisting of opaque and translucent bands on the otolith was evident. Within each opaque band a thin and clear check (ring mark) was observed in all specimens examined. Monthly change in the frequency of appearance of a ring mark on the outer margin of the otolith indicates that ring marks form between July and August. The von Bertalanffy growth model showed a sexual dimorphism in growth, as females grew faster and reached a larger size than males. The growth patterns obtained by tracking the observed total length for monthly collections showed a rapid increase in total length between August and October. Spatial variation in the growth pattern of male and female fish between northern and southern waters was evident, as southern fish were significantly larger than northern counterparts during 1.25–3.00 years post hatch.
Turnout and the Democratic Vote

Although political folk wisdom has long suggested that high turnout works to the advantage of the Democratic Party, this hypothesis has not fared well when subjected to empirical testing. The author finds strong and unequivocal evidence in support of the conventional view that greater turnout does profit Democratic candidates. This effect appears to have become more pronounced since 1960. The magnitude of the relationship is found to be considerable, such that even modest changes in turnout would have been sufficient to reverse the outcomes of recent presidential elections. The implications for party strategies and the study of voting are discussed.
Role of Bcl2 in Osteoclastogenesis and PTH Anabolic Actions in Bone

Introduction: B‐cell leukemia/lymphoma 2 (Bcl2) is a proto‐oncogene best known for its ability to suppress cell death. However, the role of Bcl2 in the skeletal system is unknown. Bcl2 has been hypothesized to play an important anti‐apoptotic role in osteoblasts during anabolic actions of PTH. Although rational, this has not been validated in vivo; hence, the impact of Bcl2 in bone remains unknown.
Complexity in history: modelling the organisational demography of the British banking sector

Using a new historical data set on the ‘population’ of British Banks for the last 200 years, we consider why, since its peak of approximately 1100 banks 1810, the population of British banks has declined to its present day population of less that 100. We hypothesise that amalgamation became an advantageous way for banks to expand, and use an agent-based simulation to test this hypothesis against the baking data. We are unable to falsify the hypothesis and show that the simulation reproduces many aspects of the real data with the minimum of assumptions.
Narratives of Translocation, Dislocation and Location: Armenian Youth Cultural Identities in Southern Russia

Abstract The findings presented here are based on ethnographic research and are concerned with subjective definitions of ethnic belonging of young Armenians in Krasnodar krai. It is demonstrated that Armenian ethnic identifications are not ‘fixed’ but rather entwined within a complex web of diverse cultural attachments, involving many ‘routes’ of translocation, dislocation and location. It was found that most of the research participants saw themselves as Armenian while drawing occasionally on cosmopolitanism as an identity resource. This enabled them to construct a sense of belonging both in terms of ethnicity and of multicultural location.