40 research outputs found
Report from GI-Dagstuhl Seminar 16394: Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World
This report documents the program and the outcomes of GI-Dagstuhl Seminar
16394 "Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World".
The seminar addressed the problem of performance-aware DevOps. Both, DevOps
and performance engineering have been growing trends over the past one to two
years, in no small part due to the rise in importance of identifying
performance anomalies in the operations (Ops) of cloud and big data systems and
feeding these back to the development (Dev). However, so far, the research
community has treated software engineering, performance engineering, and cloud
computing mostly as individual research areas. We aimed to identify
cross-community collaboration, and to set the path for long-lasting
collaborations towards performance-aware DevOps.
The main goal of the seminar was to bring together young researchers (PhD
students in a later stage of their PhD, as well as PostDocs or Junior
Professors) in the areas of (i) software engineering, (ii) performance
engineering, and (iii) cloud computing and big data to present their current
research projects, to exchange experience and expertise, to discuss research
challenges, and to develop ideas for future collaborations
Choosing Your Ethnicity: A Longitudinal Analysis of Ethnic Identity Choice and Intra-Individual Ethnicity Change
This paper studies individuals’ possible choice to forgo their ancestral ethnicity and adopt a specific new ethnicity. We first use individual-level panel data for Indonesia as well as other countries (e.g., the U.S.) to document the pervasiveness of intra-individual ethnicity change and its coincidence with major life events, particularly, interethnic marriage. Next, we focus on individuals who have intermarried and exploit variation in deep-rooted community-level norms on matrilocality (co-residence with the wife’s family) to identify how differences in expected costs and benefits of ethnicity change causally affect newlyweds’ choice to adopt a specific ethnicity (i.e., their spouses’ ethnicity) or not. Results obtained using a three-wave panel comprising more than 13,000 Indonesians confirm the expected effect of matrilocality, as newly intermarried men (women) are significantly more (less) likely to adopt their spouses’ ethnicity when the couple lives in a matrilocal community compared to a non-matrilocal one. Because ethnicity change is a means to fit in, important implication of our findings is that in many countries key statistics on ethnic fractionalization and segregation are severely inflated
Choosing Your Ethnicity: A Longitudinal Analysis of Ethnic Identity Choice and Intra-Individual Ethnicity Change
This paper studies individuals’ possible choice to forgo their ancestral ethnicity and adopt a specific new ethnicity. We first use individual-level panel data for Indonesia as well as other countries (e.g., the U.S.) to document the pervasiveness of intra-individual ethnicity change and its coincidence with major life events, particularly, interethnic marriage. Next, we focus on individuals who have intermarried and exploit variation in deep-rooted community-level norms on matrilocality (co-residence with the wife’s family) to identify how differences in expected costs and benefits of ethnicity change causally affect newlyweds’ choice to adopt a specific ethnicity (i.e., their spouses’ ethnicity) or not. Results obtained using a three-wave panel comprising more than 13,000 Indonesians confirm the expected effect of matrilocality, as newly intermarried men (women) are significantly more (less) likely to adopt their spouses’ ethnicity when the couple lives in a matrilocal community compared to a non-matrilocal one. Because ethnicity change is a means to fit in, important implication of our findings is that in many countries key statistics on ethnic fractionalization and segregation are severely inflated
Trust and Signals in Workplace Organization: Evidence from Job Autonomy Differentials between Immigrant Groups
Trust involves a willingness to be vulnerable to other agents’ actions as well as an assessment of
these agents’ trustworthiness. This paper seeks to unpack the relationship between trust and
workplace organization, focusing on signals of (un)trustworthiness guiding employers’ trust
decisions. While much research finds that societal trust norms affect workplace organization,
particularly the granting of autonomy to employees, the underlying process remains essentially a
black box. Integrating extant literatures, I posit that employers use group-level traits to infer
(un)trustworthiness and decide on how much job autonomy to grant to specific employees. I test
this prediction in a large cross-national sample comprising migrant employees originating from
home countries that differ in the degree to which corruption has been institutionalized in society.
Confirming my prediction, empirical results reveal a strong negative relationship between homecountry
corruption and job autonomy. Results are robust to controlling for a range of potential
confounders, including personal income and home-country level of economic development as
proxies for unobserved skill differentials. Key contribution of the paper is to reveal important
real-world features of trust governing exchange in the context of workplace organization
How much does job autonomy vary across countries and other extra-organizational contexts?
This paper integrates the study of contextual influences on job autonomy as a key workplace practice with the growing literature on intra-country variation (ICV) versus between-country variation (BCV) in international HRM. While contexts such as industry or country are widely recognized to affect workplace practices such as job autonomy, the influences of different extra-organizational contexts are seldom examined simultaneously or their relative influence systematically compared. Similarly, while much research considers the importance of BCV vis-Ă -vis ICV in international HRM, little attention is paid to variation that occurs between sub-national or supranational contexts. To move forward on both these counts, we use multilevel analysis and empirically assess the comparative importance of industry as a sub-national context and politico-institutional clusters as a supranational context in addition to country context as sources of differences in job autonomy. Results indicate that inter-cluster variation can be substantially larger than inter-country variation, but that inter-industry dissimilarities tend to exceed both inter-cluster and inter-country dissimilarities. Hence, the main finding of our analysis is that dissimilarities in job autonomy associated with crossing country borders are not exceptionally large as employers and employees face larger dissimilarities in job autonomy when they move across industries. Implications of this finding both for international HRM and for international business and cross-cultural management more broadly are discussed
The Cultural Roots of Human Capital Accumulation
While the accumulation of human capital is widely recognized as a key driver of economic development, what drives cross-country differences in human capital accumulation remains little understood. I use an epidemiological approach involving migrants to test for a possible cultural gradient in individuals’ propensity towards human capital accumulation. However, advancing on traditional macro-focused epidemiological culture research, I also explore a specific micro-level channel through which country-of-origin culture affects human capital accumulation involving culture’s effect on individuals’ dispositions. Results confirm a cultural gradient in the propensity towards human capital accumulation. Moreover, part of the effect of culture on migrants’ propensity towards human capital accumulation runs through migrants’ personal dispositions. Finally, culture’s effect on human capital accumulation traces back to cultural differences in emphasis on intellectual autonomy and future orientation. I conclude that understanding countries’ differential development experiences requires detailed study of the various micro channels through which culture can have macroeconomic consequences
Social trust, workplace organization, and the comparative advantage of nations
In this paper, I consider a specific channel through which trust between parties to an exchange can go on to affect nations’ comparative advantage in certain industries. My approach revolves around the autonomy that employers (principals) grant to workers (agents), which is a key feature of workplace organization. I hypothesize that social trust generates a comparative advantage in industries with more autonomous micro production environments. I employ individual-level data on work autonomy to construct a measure of the extent to which industries are characterized by autonomy in the production process. Results of a cross-country cross-industry analysis confirm that countries with higher levels of social trust have a comparative advantage in high-autonomy industries and vice versa. Results are robust to the possibility of reverse causality. The paper’s key contribution is to provide a link between the microeconomic literature on workplace organization and the comparative macroeconomic literature on social trust
The Use of Identity Primes to Explain Behavioral Differences Between Groups: A Methodological Note
Economists are increasingly using primes that make group identity salient to overcome the inferential limitations of behavioral quasi-experiments involving pre-existing groups (e.g., males vs. females). However, while priming group identity provides powerful means for identifying a causal effect of group membership on individuals’ preferences, so far, there has been little methodological reflection on the use of identity primes to identify the causes of group differences in preferences. This note’s main contribution is to offer a framework for thinking systematically about the treatment effects of priming individuals’ group identity and the identification of specific group traits explaining differences in preferences or behavior between pre-existing groups. The framework sets a high bar for studying the causes of group differences in preferences using identity primes but we clarify its usefulness using concrete examples
Trust and Organizational Design: Explaining Cross-National Differences in Work Autonomy
We open the black box of what goes on within firms in terms of how they organize and manage their operations. Work autonomy is a key aspect of firm organization and in this note we test the hypothesis that societal trust affects the level of autonomy that firms grant to their employees. Analysis of up to 189,213 individuals from 30 countries shows that trust is indeed highly conducive to work autonomy. This result is robust to controlling for a wide range of other features of countries’ institutional environment, including measures of labor regulations and quality of formal institutions. Our findings highlight the importance of societal trust in shaping economic activity
Generational Shifts in Managerial Values and the Coming of a Unified Business Culture: A Cross-National Analysis Using European Social Survey Data
In a globalizing world, cross-national differences in values and business culture and understanding these differences become increasingly central to a range of organizational issues and ethical questions. However, various concerns have been raised about extant empirical research on cross-national dissimilarities in the cultural values of managers (what we refer to as managerial values) and the development of a unified business culture. This paper seeks to address three such concerns with the literature on convergence vs. divergence of cultural values. It develops an empirical approach to the study of changing business cultures that revolves around birth cohorts and intergenerational values shifts and aims to advance empirical knowledge of the dynamics of cross-national differences in the cultural values of managers. We use time-series data covering 68,708 managers and are able to consider a sample of 32 countries that represent more than half of the cultural clusters recognized in the literature. Results reveal diverse shifts in managerial values across birth cohorts with cross-national dissimilarities waning for some basic cultural dimensions (“convergence”), remaining stable for other dimensions (“cultural stability”), and becoming more pronounced for other dimensions still (“divarication”). Moving beyond the standard convergence/divergence taxonomy, we conclude that a full-fledged convergence-stability-divarication perspective provides the best basis for thinking about the subtle ways in which business cultures are changing