Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trade Unions, Workers'Rights and the Frontier of Control in UK Call Centres

In developing a model of call centre diversity, spanning the dimensions of quantity and quality, the article develops a critique of aspects of Frenkel et al.'s recent study of 'front line'work. Drawing upon employee survey and interview data from six UK financial sector call centres, patterns of resistance and the contrasting responses of trade unions to the experience of intensive working conditions are examined. It is argued, in conclusion, that the newly established managerial 'frontiers of control'require to be combated by new union bargaining agendas which seek to address employees'concerns at the point of production.
Impact of transformational leadership on team performance: an empirical study in UAE

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate impact of transformational leadership on team performance and the effects of support for innovation and psychological empowerment in this association. Over the past many decades, teams have become an increasingly popular way of organizing and coordinating work. This trend creates new challenges for leaders, as they are expected to motivate individual employees and to improve team performance simultaneously. Design/methodology/approach – This study proposes a conceptual framework for understanding motivation and support extended to individual employees which would influence team performance. The conceptual framework includes psychological empowerment and support for innovation as mediating variables in the effect of transformational leadership on team performance. The study also validates the proposed conceptual framework using a second-order confirmatory factor analysis technique, namely, partial least squares-structural equations modeling, with the data collected from 182 followers from 10 service organizations in the UAE. Findings – The findings suggest that transformational leadership has significant positive impact on team performance and, on the contrary, transactional leadership has significant negative effect on team performance. Two dimensions of psychological empowerment such as meaning and self-determination have partial mediation effect in the relationship between transformational leadership and team performance. Originality/value – This study contributes to the research that identifies team mechanisms influenced by transformational leadership that can affect team success and performance, particularly in the context of UAE-based organizations. Managerial implications and future research areas are further discussed.
First birth trends in developed countries: Persisting parenthood postponement

Levels and trends of various facets concerning first births are continuously changing. The evidence confirms that the postponement of first births is an ongoing and persisting process which started in western countries among cohorts of the 1940s, but only in the 1960s cohorts in Central and Eastern Europe. The mean age of women having first births is universally rising. Fertility of older women was increasing. The decline in childbearing of young women is robust among the cohorts of the late 1960s and the 1970s; in Southern Europe as well as in central and Eastern Europe the rates of decline have accelerated. Childbearing behavior in the formerly socialist countries is in transition to a different regime.
Effect of Tutoring on Reading Achievement for Students with Cognitive Disabilities, Specific Learning Disabilities, and Students Receiving Title I Services.

Bowling Green State University Abstract: This empirical study investigated the effects of tutoring on the reading achievement of elementary students with cognitive disabilities and specific learning disabilities as well as students receiving Title I reading programs in Project MORE (Mentoring in Ohio for Reading Excellence). This school-based action research highlights volunteer tutors, early reading instruction, reading interventions, and one-to-one instruction. Students were pre and posttested on both informal and standardized measures of reading performance. Intervention students were matched and compared to control students in similar school districts. The results demonstrated significant positive effects for the intervention. Generally, intervention students had month-for- month gains and outperformed comparison students in reading over the six month period.
DOES DISPERSED PUBLIC OWNERSHIP IMPAIR EFFICIENCY? THE CASE OF REFUSE COLLECTION IN NORWAY

Corporate governance theory suggests that companies with dispersed and indirect ownership suffer from agency costs. A worst case is where several political authorities jointly own a company, which allows managers to operate with inferior efficiency. In political economy, the manager is not the major agency problem. Elected politicians may impair efficiency to improve their re-election prospects. Since politicians have less influence in jointly owned firms, such companies are expected to perform better than those owned by a single public authority. Consistent with corporate governance – but not political economy – the empirical analysis suggests that dispersed municipal ownership impairs cost efficiency. In the Norwegian case of municipal refuse collection presented here, costs of dispersed ownership often outstrip gains from economies of scale. Use of jointly owned companies is not necessarily a proper response to efficiency problems inherent a fragmented local government structure.
The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies

This paper argues that the textbook search and matching model cannot generate the observed business-cycle-frequency fluctuations in unemployment and job vacancies in response to shocks of a plausible magnitude. In the United States, the standard deviation of the vacancy-unemployment ratio is almost 20 times as large as the standard deviation of average labor productivity, while the search model predicts that the two variables should have nearly the same volatility. A shock that changes average labor productivity primarily alters the present value of wages, generating only a small movement along a downward-sloping Beveridge curve (unemployment-vacancy locus). A shock to the separation rate generates a counterfactually positive correlation between unemployment and vacancies. In both cases, the model exhibits virtually no propagation.
The Causes of Unemployment in Iran

This paper examines the major causes of Iran's unemployment conundrum using a simultaneous-equation model and annual time series data from 1968 to 2000. It is found that the rate of unemployment responds positively to output gap and increasing economic uncertainty and negatively to the higher growth rates of real investment and inflation, supporting the view that there exists a degree of trade-off between inflation and unemployment. However, since persistent and soaring inflation rates eventually lead to the chronic depreciation of the domestic currency and rising economic instability, it will be irrational to exploit this trade-off to fight against unemployment, particularly in the post-1979 revolution. Iran possesses one of the youngest populations in the world with approximately 40 per cent of its population less than 15 years. It is thus argued that if major tax and constitutional reforms are not undertaken, unemployment will continue to rise, depicting a sombre future for the next working age generation.
A Behavioural Analysis of Investor Diversification

This paper studies the link between individual investors’ portfolio diversification levels and various personal traits that proxy informational advantages and overconfidence. The analysis is based on objective data from the largest Turkish brokerage house tracking 59,951 individual investors’ accounts with a total of 3,248,654 million transactions over the period 2008–2010. Wealthier, highly educated, older investors working in the finance sector and those trading relatively often show higher diversification levels possibly because they are better equipped to obtain and process information. Finance professionals, married investors, and those placing high-volume orders through investment centers show poorer diversification possibly as a reflection of overconfidence. Our analysis reveals important nonlinear effects, implying that the marginal impact of overconfidence on diversification is not uniform across investors but varies according to the investor's information gathering and processing abilities.
Motivating adherence among adolescents with cystic fibrosis: Youth and parent perspectives

As advances in the care of individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) have resulted in improved survival, therapeutic regimens for treatment of CF have become increasingly complex. This high treatment burden poses challenges to chronic disease self‐management, particularly amongst adolescents. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the barriers and facilitators of adherence to chronic CF therapies as perceived by adolescents with CF and their parents. In a series of structured interviews with 18 youth and their parents, we explored issues related to daily routines, youth and parental roles regarding chronic therapy, and motivators for adherence. All interviews were audio‐recorded and coded for themes and patterns. Reported barriers to adherence included time pressures, competing priorities, heightened awareness of disease trajectory, privacy concerns, and lack of perceived consequences from non‐adherence. Identified facilitators for adherence included recognizing the importance of therapies, developing strong relationships with care teams, establishing structured routines, and focusing on shifting responsibilities from a parent to their adolescent child. The themes uncovered by these interviews identify areas for intervention and support by clinical programs seeking to improve adherence and self‐management strategies for adolescents with CF. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2015; 50:127–136. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Concurrent infection with Schistosoma mansoni attenuates inflammation induced changes in colonic morphology, cytokine levels, and smooth muscle contractility of trinitrobenzene sulphonic acid induced colitis in rats

Background and aims: Crohn’s disease, characterised by chronic T helper 1 (Th1) inflammation and dysmotility of the gut, is most prevalent in developed countries. Parasitic infections are most prevalent in developing countries and induce a T helper 2 (Th2) immune response. We hypothesised that this Th2 immune response protects against Th1 gut inflammation. Methods: The parasite Schistosoma mansoni induces a transient Th2 immune response in the semipermissive rat host. 2,4,6-Trinitrobenzene sulphonic acid (TNBS) induced colitis is an experimental model of Th1-like gut inflammation. The effect of concurrent infection with S mansoni on the course of TNBS induced colitis was assessed using macroscopic and microscopic damage scores, histology, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity assay, cytokine production assay, and by studying in vitro contractility of longitudinal and circular colonic muscle strips. Results: TNBS induced colitis that spontaneously healed after four weeks. Concurrent infection with S mansoni significantly reduced the duration of TNBS induced colitis to two weeks, as shown by macroscopic and microscopic damage scores and by a faster decrease in colonic MPO activity. TNBS increased colonic interleukin 2 (IL-2) production whereas S mansoni increased splenic IL-4 and IL-2 levels. Contractility of longitudinal and circular muscle strips was maximally inhibited one week after TNBS and normalised after three weeks. After four weeks, longitudinal muscle strip contractility was significantly increased. Concurrent infection with S mansoni normalised longitudinal muscle contractility after one week whereas circular muscle contractility remained inhibited. Conclusions: Concurrent infection with S mansoni significantly attenuates TNBS induced colitis in the rat. Inflammation induced disturbances in contractility of longitudinal and circular colonic muscle strips may outlast the inflammatory reaction.
Using a Global Botanic Gardens Database to Help Assess the Capabilities of Rare Eucalypt Species to Cope with Climate Change

SUMMARY Climate change impact analyses have focused mostly on natural distributions of plants and have generally ignored their intrinsic climatic adaptability. This may produce unreliable predictions of impacts. Eucalypts are potentially instructive for climate change studies, as many species have been assessed in commercial forestry trials outside the conditions of their natural distributions. However, rare eucalypt species, which usually have limited natural distributions, and are likely to be most susceptible to climate change, are often small or multi-stemmed species, which have generally not been included in commercial trials. This study used information for 12 rare eucalypt species from the PlantSearch database of Botanic Gardens Conservation International and assessed if this information can assist determining their climatic adaptability. The results should be treated with caution, but indicate that most of the 12 species are growing at some botanic gardens under annual mean temperature conditions that are warmer than where they occur naturally.
University Students' Knowledge of and Attitudes toward Sex Offenders and Treatment of Sex Offenders in New Zealand and China

Topics related to sexual offending and sex offenders can provoke a great deal of fear and anxiety in society. Sex offenders are a group of people who are considered to be especially unpleasant and harmful compared to other types of offenders. Over the past two decades, academic researchers and clinical professionals have developed a variety of assessment methods and treatment programmes to reduce recidivism rates of sex offenders. Public attitudes toward sex offenders are proposed to play an important role in the effectiveness of treatment for sex offenders. Thus, general community members' attitudes have been widely studied in western countries. However, there is little cross-cultural research exploring Asian people's attitudes toward sex offenders. The three keys purposes of this study were to examine university students' knowledge of and attitudes toward sex offenders, explore how their knowledge and attitudes were formed, and compare the similarities and differences between New Zealand and Chinese university students. A total of 62 participants were included in this study; 29 from New Zealand and 33 from China. It was hypothesized that New Zealand university students would be more knowledgeable of and positive toward sex offenders, treatment of sex offenders and released sex offenders than Chinese university students. The results supported hypotheses that New Zealand students had greater knowledge of and positive attitudes toward sex offenders and treatment of sex offenders. However, no difference was found in people's attitudes toward released sex offenders between two groups of students. The results also indicated that the news media was the most common source of information on sexual offending and sex offenders in both countries. However, there is a great difference in people's attitudes toward veracity of information provided by the media between New Zealand and iii Chinese students. The results are considered in light of current research. Implications and future research directions are briefly discussed.
Skills in England 2003: Volume 2, research report

Skills in England 2003 is presented in four volumes this year. Volume 1 provides key messages and an overview of the research findings in the other three volumes. Volume 2 is the main research report and this year, as well as containing the same core of information as in previous years - separate chapters on skills supply, skills demand, mismatches between demand and supply, and future skill needs - also contains other chapters that look at issues which are particularly topical this year. To this end a chapter is contained on the latest developments in policy given the publication of several important policy documents since last year's Skills in England report. Given the emphasis in policy on stimulating the demand for skills, a chapter is presented on the links between investments in skills and training and organisational performance. It is also important to recognise that the benefits of economic growth and investments in training and skills do not affect everyone equally. There are groups in society who fail to obtain advantage from training and skills development and to illustrate this a chapter on social exclusion and equality of opportunity has been included this year. An important element of combating social exclusion has been the use of labour market programmes such as New Deal. Labour market programmes often contain a large element devoted to training of one kind or another and have been an important tool of labour market policy in many European countries. Arguably there is much more emphasis on active labour market policy in Britain today than hitherto with programmes such as New Deal, so a chapter has been devoted to this aspect of skills development. Finally, Volumes 3 and 4 provide evidence related to industrial sector and regional/local trends respectively. Terence Hogarth Rob Wilson Joint editors Skills in England 2003
The impact of analyst-investor disagreement on the cross-section of implied cost of capital

Implied cost of capital estimates are typically calculated using analysts’ forecasts as proxies for the market’s earnings expectations. We examine the case where deviations between investors’ expectations and analysts’ beliefs, as manifested by analysts’ recommendations, cause predictable variation in implied cost of capital. We find that stocks recommended by analysts as Buy or Strong Buy have, ceteris paribus, higher implied cost of capital than stocks recommended as Underperform or Sell, and that the effect is more clearly pronounced in stocks that have been downgraded. We attribute the effect to differential expectations between analysts and investors regarding future profitability, rather than differential expectations regarding systematic risk. We demonstrate that adjusting analysts’ earnings forecasts in line with the market’s earnings expectations largely eliminates the observed variation, indicating that such corrective mechanisms could and should be incorporated in the estimation of implied cost of capital.
Some Optimal Dividends Problems

We consider a situation originally discussed by De Finetti (1957) in which a surplus process is modified by the introduction of a constant dividend barrier. We extend some known results relating to the distribution of the present value of dividend payments until ruin in the classical risk model and show how a discrete time risk model can be used to provide approximations when analytic results are unavailable. We extend the analysis by allowing the process to continue after ruin.
Divestiture as a strategic option for change in NITEL: lessons from the BT and AT&T experience

Purpose – As NITEL, Nigeria's former national carrier, has been unable to cope with provision requirements needed by the country to support its development needs, this has led to changes in the attitude of the Nigerian government to competition within the industry. It is the contention of this paper that NITEL could learn from progress already made by its counterparts (such as BT and AT&T) in developed countries such as the UK and USA, especially in the area of regulation and divestiture.Design/methodology/approach – In order to examine these issues, this problem is addressed from two perspectives. In the first place, a comparison is carried out between the Nigerian telecommunications industry and progress already made in the UK and US telecommunications industry. In addition, although contextual differences do exist between the developed UK and US industry and the developing Nigerian market, such a comparison is seen as feasible based on previous research in this field. Arguably, it is suggested that div.
Procyclical Skill Retooling and Equilibrium Search

We argue that more workers choose to switch occupations in booms than in recessions. That is, skill retooling is procyclical. This view is consistent with Lucas and Prescotts (1974) equilibrium search model modified with aggregate shocks and unemployment insurance. Empirical support is found in a unique Canadian administrative data set that measures the annual flow of workers (from 1979-1993) who separate from their jobs to 'return to school'. This flow is strongly procyclical. (Copyright: Elsevier)
The weak form efficiency of the London Metal Exchange

Filter techniques are used to test for dependency and weak form efficiency on the London Metal Exchange. They are applied to daily cash and futures prices for copper, lead, tin and zinc, for the period 1972-1982. The results are adjusted for the bias in filter tests caused by the upward trend of prices. An exact test statistic is derived; doubts are raised however about its reliability. The results show strong evidence of inefficiency for copper, weaker but positive evidence for lead and zinc, and no evidence at all for tin.
Multiple-Scattering Optical Tomography with Layered Material

In this paper, we propose an optical tomography for optically dense media in which multiple scattering is dominant. We model a material by many layers of voxels, and light scattering as a distribution from a voxel in one layer to other voxels in the next layer. Then we write attenuation of light along a light path by an inner product of vectors, and formulate the scattering tomography as an inequality constraint minimization problem solved by interior point methods. We show experimental results with numerical simulation for evaluating the proposed method.
Time Varying Asian Stock Market Integration

We employ an asset pricing framework with varying estimation lengths to show that there has been an increasing degree of integration between Asian and international stock markets, but very little with Japan. This finding is consistent with prior studies and highlights the impact of recent regulatory and economic reform undertaken throughout the region. Our results show that instability in the asset variance structure underpins the observed varying degrees of financial market integration. In particular, modeling integration using shorter estimation periods helps explain the time varying nature of financial market integration and the benefits that may accrue to international and domestic investors.
Citizens’ perceptions of trust relationships in the environmental management process in North Lebanon

This research investigates how trust plays a role in environmental management in North Lebanon, which has suffered repeated episodes of armed conflict in recent times. Previous studies have shown that environmental problems have increased and that the government has been unable to address these, even during periods of relative peace. We examined trust as a factor that contributes to, or hampers, environmental management. Our analysis drew on a survey in 2011 involving 499 citizens. The results demonstrated that, according to citizens, the lack of trust between citizens, and between citizens and the public sector, is a key factor obstructing effective environmental management. The results indicate the level of correlation between how trusting people are; how citizens participate; and how people perceive government legitimacy.