Leading from the Middle – How Gen X Leaders are Navigating Their Leadership Experience with Baby Boomers and Millennials

Leadership in higher education is often evaluated and scrutinized. As with many other professional settings, good leadership often defines the success of the organization. This is also true in higher education. In order to help define what success looks like in the area of leadership, one evaluation point is to examine the age and generational position of the leaders within an institution. Looking at these relationships and connections can open a pathway of understanding in relation to quality of leadership and strength of relationships between leader and worker. Other studies and evaluations exist on the Greatest generation, the Baby Boomer generation, and even more recently the Millennial generation. Yet, there is little research on Generation X and their experiences in managing between these other generations. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the evolution of the Generation X leader in higher education and their relationships with Baby Boomers, Millennials, and now Generation Z as they enter the workforce. Ten Generation X leaders working within a public college and university system agreed to participate in the study. Findings from this study, connected to the research questions, reflected themes of leadership journey influences, tendencies of the other generations and how those factors influenced interactions and best practice, and the outlook of leadership in higher education going forward. These themes revealed consistency in best practice, pitfalls, and optimism for what is ahead as Generation X leaders in higher education institutions lead from the middle

Fast Biclustering by Dual Parameterization

We study two clustering problems, Starforest Editing, the problem of adding and deleting edges to obtain a disjoint union of stars, and the generalization Bicluster Editing. We show that, in addition to being NP-hard, none of the problems can be solved in subexponential time unless the exponential time hypothesis fails. Misra, Panolan, and Saurabh (MFCS 2013) argue that introducing a bound on the number of connected components in the solution should not make the problem easier: In particular, they argue that the subexponential time algorithm for editing to a fixed number of clusters (p-Cluster Editing) by Fomin et al. (J. Comput. Syst. Sci., 80(7) 2014) is an exception rather than the rule. Here, p is a secondary parameter, bounding the number of components in the solution. However, upon bounding the number of stars or bicliques in the solution, we obtain algorithms which run in time $2^{5 \sqrt{pk}} + O(n+m)$ for p-Starforest Editing and $2^{O(p \sqrt{k} \log(pk))} + O(n+m)$ for p-Bicluster Editing. We obtain a similar result for the more general case of t-Partite p-Cluster Editing. This is subexponential in k for fixed number of clusters, since p is then considered a constant. Our results even out the number of multivariate subexponential time algorithms and give reasons to believe that this area warrants further study.Comment: Accepted for presentation at IPEC 201

Exploring Subexponential Parameterized Complexity of Completion Problems

Let ${\cal F}$ be a family of graphs. In the ${\cal F}$-Completion problem, we are given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$ as input, and asked whether at most $k$ edges can be added to $G$ so that the resulting graph does not contain a graph from ${\cal F}$ as an induced subgraph. It appeared recently that special cases of ${\cal F}$-Completion, the problem of completing into a chordal graph known as Minimum Fill-in, corresponding to the case of ${\cal F}=\{C_4,C_5,C_6,\ldots\}$, and the problem of completing into a split graph, i.e., the case of ${\cal F}=\{C_4, 2K_2, C_5\}$, are solvable in parameterized subexponential time $2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log{k})}n^{O(1)}$. The exploration of this phenomenon is the main motivation for our research on ${\cal F}$-Completion. In this paper we prove that completions into several well studied classes of graphs without long induced cycles also admit parameterized subexponential time algorithms by showing that: - The problem Trivially Perfect Completion is solvable in parameterized subexponential time $2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log{k})}n^{O(1)}$, that is ${\cal F}$-Completion for ${\cal F} =\{C_4, P_4\}$, a cycle and a path on four vertices. - The problems known in the literature as Pseudosplit Completion, the case where ${\cal F} = \{2K_2, C_4\}$, and Threshold Completion, where ${\cal F} = \{2K_2, P_4, C_4\}$, are also solvable in time $2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log{k})} n^{O(1)}$. We complement our algorithms for ${\cal F}$-Completion with the following lower bounds: - For ${\cal F} = \{2K_2\}$, ${\cal F} = \{C_4\}$, ${\cal F} = \{P_4\}$, and ${\cal F} = \{2K_2, P_4\}$, ${\cal F}$-Completion cannot be solved in time $2^{o(k)} n^{O(1)}$ unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) fails. Our upper and lower bounds provide a complete picture of the subexponential parameterized complexity of ${\cal F}$-Completion problems for ${\cal F}\subseteq\{2K_2, C_4, P_4\}$.Comment: 32 pages, 16 figures, A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of STACS'1

ESG and stock market performance during COVID-19 : an empirical analysis of Nordic publicly listed firms in the COVID-19 stock market

In the wake of the COVID-19 stock market crash, the debate over ESG’s ability to preserve shareholder value through turbulent times has received increasing attention. In this thesis we analyze the effect of ESG on stock market performance during the COVID-19 Nordic stock market, and whether ESG acted as a resilience factor. We test 188 listed Nordic firms during the crisis from February 19 to March 23 and the rebound period from March 23 to June 5. In our first model, a cross-sectional model with Buy-and-Hold Abnormal Returns, we find a neutral relationship between ESG and stock market performance during the crisis, but a negative relationship during the rebound, which we believe can be explained by market sentiment. A second model, a panel data model with fixed effects, confirms these results and finds a differential effect of ESG when comparing the rebound to ordinary times. Amongst the three ESG dimensions, our findings indicate that the Environmental dimension played a main role in the negative effect during the rebound. Our results are robust to multiple tests, but the results are limited to ESG-scored, Nordic firms. Further, we identify potential issues of sampling bias for ESG-rated firms, which should be further explored in future research.nhhma

Stratification in the medical profession: non-western physicians in Norway

Previous studies of internal stratification in medicine suggest that non-White foreign-trained physicians fill the bottom level of the specialist hierarchy. However, in this study we use administrative registers for majority and non-Western physicians in Norway and find that non-Western physicians acquire specialisation in the same volume as majority colleagues, are equally likely to enter several of the high prestige specialties and are not delayed in their careers. The equal distribution is discussed as a consequence of strong professional closure, bureaucratisation of hiring procedures and hospital organisation and governmental influence. Identified patterns, however, are not unequivocal. First, immigrant physicians have a significantly higher chance of becoming specialists compared to majority physicians. Second, foreign-educated non-Western physicians have a significantly lower likelihood of specialising in surgery fields. The exception from the overall equality may result from exclusionary practices previously identified in surgery, but it could also result from differences in motivation

A Cross-sectional Study of Sustainable Employment in Nordic Eldercare

This study addresses the retention challenges of Nordic eldercare by investigating how care workers’ work-time arrangements are associated with consideration to quit the job. Particular attention is paid to the mediating role of economic distress and work-life conflict. Based on a Nordic cross-sectional survey (Nordcare II), we investigate how different modes of shift work scheduling and involuntary part-time employment are directly and indirectly associated with consideration to quit the job. Parallel analyses from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden reveal that work-time arrangements are indirectly associated with consideration to quit the job in all countries. Perceived work-life conflict increases with the number of different shifts included in a shift schedule. Danish care workers, who more often work fixed shifts, report the lowest level of work-life conflict. Involuntary part-time employment, which is most widespread in Norway, is directly associated with financial distress in all countries, but with work-life conflict in Norway only

On the number of types in sparse graphs

We prove that for every class of graphs $\mathcal{C}$ which is nowhere dense, as defined by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez, and for every first order formula $\phi(\bar x,\bar y)$, whenever one draws a graph $G\in \mathcal{C}$ and a subset of its nodes $A$, the number of subsets of $A^{|\bar y|}$ which are of the form $\{\bar v\in A^{|\bar y|}\, \colon\, G\models\phi(\bar u,\bar v)\}$ for some valuation $\bar u$ of $\bar x$ in $G$ is bounded by $\mathcal{O}(|A|^{|\bar x|+\epsilon})$, for every $\epsilon>0$. This provides optimal bounds on the VC-density of first-order definable set systems in nowhere dense graph classes. We also give two new proofs of upper bounds on quantities in nowhere dense classes which are relevant for their logical treatment. Firstly, we provide a new proof of the fact that nowhere dense classes are uniformly quasi-wide, implying explicit, polynomial upper bounds on the functions relating the two notions. Secondly, we give a new combinatorial proof of the result of Adler and Adler stating that every nowhere dense class of graphs is stable. In contrast to the previous proofs of the above results, our proofs are completely finitistic and constructive, and yield explicit and computable upper bounds on quantities related to uniform quasi-wideness (margins) and stability (ladder indices)

Wage Inequality Within and Between Occupations

Western countries, including Scandinavian nations, have witnessed an increase in wage inequality over the past decades. Recent studies attribute rising wage inequality in the United States and United Kingdom primarily to between-occupation inequality, while changes in within-occupation wage inequality were less important for the overall growth. We investigate this hypothesis in the Norwegian context. Our results show a slight increase in inequality from 2003 to 2012, mostly accounted for by between-occupational wage inequality. Occupations became a more important determinant of wages, but the increase in total wage inequality was small. In order to explain trends in wage inequality, we turn to three occupational characteristics: licensure, unionization, and credentialization