Predicting Performance Of Initial Public Offering (IPO) Firms: Should Human Resource Management (HRM) Be In The Equation?

Population ecology is utilized to understand the role of human resource management (HRM) in enhancing the performance of initial public offering (IPO) companies. This is done by examining the determinants of structural inertia and developing hypotheses on the relationship between HRM and organizational performance. The results indicate that two human resource variables (human resource value and organization-based rewards) predict initial investor reaction and long-term survival. The rewards variable negatively affects initial performance while positively impacting survival

Autoimmune actions in the ableist academy: A crip response

Rather than embracing difference as a reflection of wider society, academic ecosystems seek to normalise and homogenise ways of working and of being a researcher. As a consequence, ableism in academia is endemic. However, to date no attempt has been made to theorise experiences of ableism in academia. Ableism in Academia provides an interdisciplinary outlook on ableism that is currently missing. Through reporting research data and exploring personal experiences, the contributors theorise and conceptualise what it means to be/work outside the stereotypical norm. The volume brings together a range of perspectives, including feminism, post-structuralism, such as Derridean and Foucauldian theory, crip theory and disability theory, and draw on the width and breadth of a number of related disciplines. Contributors use technicism, leadership, social justice theories and theories of embodiment to raise awareness and increase understanding of the marginalised; that is those academics who are not perfect. These theories are placed in the context of neoliberal academia, which is distant from the privileged and romanticised versions that exist in the public and internalised imaginations of academics, and used to interrogate aspects of identity, aspects of how disability is performed, and to argue that ableism is not just a disability issue. This timely collection of chapters will be of interest to researchers in Disability Studies, Higher Education Studies and Sociology, and to those researching the relationship between theory and personal experience across the Social Sciences

Autoimmunity: Deconstructing Fictions of Illness and the Terrible Future to Come

Autoimmunity, a term from the life-sciences, refers to that strange behaviour where an organism’s defences turn on and against its own tissues. Autoimmune disease marks this process as a painful, suicidal, and terrifying relation to one’s own body. Taking an autobiographical approach to autoimmune illness, this thesis examines the autoimmunity of the autos ‘itself’ in order to deconstruct a paradigm of immunity that paralyses one within process of self-destructive- defence. With Jacques Derrida’s appropriation of autoimmunity the term enters a deconstructive philosophical discourse. For Derrida, autoimmunity attacks not (only) the body but immune defences themselves and names the opening of the body to the future ‘to-come.’ And yet, the use of this term is couched in a rhetoric of terror that emphasises the threat of even worse events ‘to-come.’ This thesis explores whether the trauma of autoimmunity need necessarily emphasise an exponential threat that only refers to the worst. Or, whether this trauma might be ‘treated’ in a manner that affirms autoimmunity. Amongst the treatments employed are various narratives of science and science fiction. Chapter One explores the relations between biomedical and deconstructive autoimmunity and treats their traumatic symptoms psychoanalytically. Chapter Two employs the immunitary logic of systems theory to comfort my dis-ease, a dis-ease I share with the laboratory animal. While Chapter Three turns to the biopolitics of immunity and Roberto Esposito’s account of an affirmative biopolitics. However, while each of these ‘treatments’ attest to the possibility of opening the terror of the trauma to-come to the promise of better, they also repress, suppress, and ignore the possibility of a radical finitude, which, for Derrida, is essential for any ethical relation. Yet, if a radical finitude here takes on the character of the worst, it must be emphasised that it is an autoimmune finitude, for better or worse

Men Also Do Laundry: Multi-Attribute Bias Amplification

As computer vision systems become more widely deployed, there is increasing concern from both the research community and the public that these systems are not only reproducing but amplifying harmful social biases. The phenomenon of bias amplification, which is the focus of this work, refers to models amplifying inherent training set biases at test time. Existing metrics measure bias amplification with respect to single annotated attributes (e.g., $\texttt{computer}$). However, several visual datasets consist of images with multiple attribute annotations. We show models can learn to exploit correlations with respect to multiple attributes (e.g., {$\texttt{computer}$, $\texttt{keyboard}$}), which are not accounted for by current metrics. In addition, we show current metrics can give the erroneous impression that minimal or no bias amplification has occurred as they involve aggregating over positive and negative values. Further, these metrics lack a clear desired value, making them difficult to interpret. To address these shortcomings, we propose a new metric: Multi-Attribute Bias Amplification. We validate our proposed metric through an analysis of gender bias amplification on the COCO and imSitu datasets. Finally, we benchmark bias mitigation methods using our proposed metric, suggesting possible avenues for future bias mitigationComment: Accepted at ICML 202

Characteristics of Adults with Anxiety or Depression Treated at an Internet Clinic: Comparison with a National Survey and an Outpatient Clinic

Background There is concern that people seeking treatment over the Internet for anxiety or depressive disorders may not resemble the general population or have less severe disorders than patients attending outpatient clinics or cases identified in community surveys. Thus the response to treatment in Internet based trials might not generalize. Methodology We reviewed the characteristics of applicants to an Australian Internet-based treatment clinic for anxiety and depression, and compared this sample with people from a national epidemiological survey and a sample of patients at a specialist outpatient anxiety and depression clinic. Participants included 774 volunteers to an Internet clinic, 454 patients at a specialist anxiety disorders outpatient clinic, and 627 cases identified in a national epidemiological survey. Main measures included demographic characteristics, and severity of symptoms as measured by the Kessler 10-Item scale (K-10), the 12-item World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule second edition (WHODAS-II), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Body Sensations Questionnaire (BSQ), the Automatic Cognitions Questionnaire (ACQ), the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS). Principal Findings The severity of symptoms of participants attending the two clinics was similar, and both clinic samples were more severe than cases in the epidemiological survey. The Internet clinic and national samples were older and comprised more females than those attending the outpatient clinic. The Internet clinic sample were more likely to be married than the other samples. The Internet clinic and outpatient clinic samples had higher levels of educational qualifications than the national sample, but employment status was similar across groups. Conclusions The Internet clinic sample have disorders as severe as those attending an outpatient clinic, but with demographic characteristics more consistent with the national sample. These data indicate that the benefits of Internet treatment could apply to the wider population.5 page(s

Group Gender Composition and Work Group Relations: Theories, Evidence, and Issues

[Excerpt] Prior to the publication of Kanter\u27s seminal Men and Women of the Corporation in 1977, the field of organizational studies exhibited a striking degree of oblivion to the effect of gender relations on work group dynamics. This neglect may have been due, in part, to the relatively small proportion of women in the labor force in the first half of the 20th century, as well as to high levels of occupational and job segregation, which helped conceal the influence of group gender composition on individual and group behavior. In the postwar years, however, women\u27s rate of entry into the labor force nearly doubled that of the preceding three decades, and women began to occupy many jobs and occupations that had been the near-exclusive province of men. In this context, Kanter\u27s provocative analysis of the impact of work group gender composition on group relations served as the impetus for an outpouring of both theoretical and empirical work. Studies following Kanter\u27s have explored the effects of gender composition on a wide range of outcomes, based on a variety of theoretical perspectives. In this chapter, we review five major theoretical paradigms that, singly or in combination, have provided the underpinning for most empirical studies, then review the findings from empirical work, focusing on the degree to which they provide support for each perspective. In concluding, we identify several avenues that merit greater attention in future research and theorizing

Influence of medical journal press releases on the quality of associated newspaper coverage: retrospective cohort study

Objective To determine whether the quality of press releases issued by medical journals can influence the quality of associated newspaper stories

Normative Data for the 12 Item WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0

Background: The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0) measures disability due to health conditions including diseases, illnesses, injuries, mental or emotional problems, and problems with alcohol or drugs. Method: The 12 Item WHODAS 2.0 was used in the second Australian Survey of Mental Health and Well-being. We report the overall factor structure and the distribution of scores and normative data (means and SDs) for people with any physical disorder, any mental disorder and for people with neither. Findings: A single second order factor justifies the use of the scale as a measure of global disability. People with mental disorders had high scores (mean 6.3, SD 7.1), people with physical disorders had lower scores (mean 4.3, SD 6.1). People with no disorder covered by the survey had low scores (mean 1.4, SD 3.6). Interpretation: The provision of normative data from a population sample of adults will facilitate use of the WHODAS 2.0 12 item scale in clinical and epidemiological research

Canning Processes Reduce the DNA-Based Traceability of Commercial Tropical Tunas

Canned tuna is one of the most widely traded seafood products internationally and is of growing demand. There is an increasing concern over the vulnerability of canned tuna supply chains to species mislabelling and fraud. Extensive processing conditions in canning operations can lead to the degradation and fragmentation of DNA, complicating product traceability. We here employed a forensically validated DNA barcoding tool (cytochrome b partial sequences) to assess the effects of canning processes on DNA degradation and the identification of four tropical tuna species (yellowfin, bigeye, skipjack and longtail tuna) collected on a global scale, along their commercial chains. Each species was studied under five different canning processes i.e., freezing, defrosting, cooking, and canning in oil and brine, in order to investigate how these affect DNA-based species identification and traceability. The highest percentage of nucleotide substitutions were observed after brine-canning operations and were greatest for yellowfin and skipjack tuna. Overall, we found that DNA degradation significantly increased along the tuna canning process for most specimens. Consequently, most of the specimens canned in oil or brine were misidentified due to the high rate of nucleotide substitution in diagnostic sequences

The Effects of Gender Composition in Academic Departments on Faculty Turnover

Using data collected from a sample of 50 academic departments over the years 1977-88, the authors test several hypotheses about the effects of departmental gender composition on faculty turnover. They find that as the proportion of women in a department grew, turnover among women also increased, confirming the prediction that increases in the relative size of a minority will result in increased intergroup competition and conflict. The evidence also suggests, however, that when the proportion of female faculty reached a threshold of about 35-40%, turnover among women began to decline. The proportion of women had a negligible or negative impact on turnover among male faculty. The authors discuss the implications of this research for the implementation of affirmative action policies