Unraveling the age-productivity nexus: Confronting perceptions of employers and employees

What determines the perceived productivity of young and older workers? In this study we present evidence for (Dutch) employers and employees. By confronting the perceptions of employers and employees some remarkable similarities and differences are revealed. It turns out that productivity perceptions are biased by the age group to which one belongs and the position in the hierarchy in the organization. The young favor the young, the old favor the old and employers discount productivity compared to employees. However, there are also remarkable similarities across employer and employees. By distinguishing the various underlying dimensions of productivity of young and older workers we tested whether ‘soft’ skills and abilities within the organization are just as important as the ‘hard’ dimensions - cognitive and physically based skills - in the eye of employers and employees. It appears that employers and employees weight the soft and the hard dimensions of skills in a uniform way: hard skills are far more important than soft skills no matter whether the worker is old or young. By sharing the stereotypical images the problem of age discrimination may therefore not only be due to employers’ behaviors and attitudes, but also due to those of employees.aging;stereotypes;productivity;employers

Alcohol outlets near schools in a midsize Romanian city : prevalence and characteristics

Objective: alcohol availability is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent alcohol use, and subsequent harm. Alcohol outlets near schools are an important indicator of three types of availability related to adolescent alcohol use; physical (number), economic (price), and legal (compliance with age limits).\ud \ud Method: two teams with trained students (16 and 17 years old) visited all 37 schools in a 200,000 inhabitant Romanian city (Pitesti). On the spot all alcohol outlets were visited and data was collected on outlet characteristics and visitors. Also, by conducting mystery shopping purchase attempts by the researchers, compliance on the age limits for alcohol sales was tested.\ud \ud Results: a total of 40 outlets were found within a 250 meter distance around 23 schools. Alcohol turns out to be cheap, and commercial alcohol brand signs are dominantly visible. With respect to compliance with the 18-year-old Romanian age limit for alcohol sales, only eight (20%) outlets refused to sell alcohol to under aged decoy customers.\ud \ud Conclusion: adolescent alcohol availability is high on the physical, economic and legal aspect. Pitesti is the first city in\ud Romania where an international alcohol prevention project has started to reduce alcohol related consequences. This project\ud involves all relevant stakeholders, and the first new legislation on this subject had been implemented

Low densities in asymmetric nuclear matter

Version2, Paper + figures included, PTHAsymmetric nuclear matter is investigated in the low density region below the nuclear saturation density. Microscopic calculations based on the Dirac Brueckner Hartree-Fock (DBHF) approach with realistic nucleon-nucleon potentials are used to adjust a low density functional. This functional is constructed on a density expansion of the relativistic mean field theory which allows a clear interpretation of the role of the mesons to the equation of state. It is shown that a correction term should be added to the functional in order to take into account the effects beyond the mean field. Two functionals with different corrections are obtained. Those functionals converge to predict a reduction of the spinodal zone in asymmetric nuclear matter by about 15-20\% and an isoscalar unstable mode closer to the constant Z/A direction than the functional without correction

Relational Model Conflicts in Knowledge Sharing Behavior

The distributed nature of organizational knowledge makes that knowledge sharing an important factor for unlocking its potential value. In practice, however, people may have different motivations for not sharing knowledge with colleagues, which in part may be due to the relational context. In this paper, we adopt Fiske’s Relational Model Theory to investigate relational dynamics in knowledge sharing behavior. Our objective is to gain insight into how relational model conflicts affect knowledge sharing in organizations. A series of experiments have been conducted, in which the consequences of relational model conflicts for the willingness to share knowledge are evaluated. Each experiment contained four scenarios reflecting different relational models. Participants were faced with different scenarios reflecting particular relational models, and a fictitious other colleague who behaved according to a conflicting relational model. Our analysis shows that the recognition of relational model conflicts strongly depends on the relational models involved. The extent of recognition seems to be related with the nature of the exchange relationships involved in the conflict. For instance, the relational model conflict was more acutely felt by a communal sharing participant facing a market pricing colleague, than by the same participant dealing with an authority ranking response. Likewise, we find that the impact of relational model conflicts on the willingness to share knowledge depends on the relational models involved. Specifically, it appears that market pricing responses have a negative influence on participants’ willingness to share, while communal sharing responses generally have positive effects. Our research serves as a starting point for other studies aiming at a deeper understanding of the dynamics of knowledge sharing behavior of employees and for solving conflicts at work

Boosting business with data analysis

__Abstract__ Pretty much every modern organisation collects a mountain of data on a daily basis as it goes about its business. But all that data is of little real value unless it is properly analysed and used to anticipate client behaviour and needs

Improving the supply chain in humanitarian logistics

Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is an NGO with a special mission: to provide medical care in places ordinary physicians can’t reach. Making sure all their long-term clinics have the right amount of the roughly 2,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) with which each is supplied is an enormous logistical challenge

A simple, fast and reproducible echocardiographic approach to grade left ventricular diastolic function

The American Society of Echocardiography and European Association of Echocardiography (ASE/EAE) have published an algorithm for the grading of diastolic function. However, the ability to use this algorithm effectively in daily clinical practice has not been investigated. We hypothesized that in some patients it may be difficult to grade diastolic dysfunction with this scheme, since there may be discrepancies in the assessed parameters. The aim of the current study was to test the feasibility of the ASE/EAE algorithm and to compare this with a new Thoraxcenter (TXC) algorithm. The ASE/EAE and TXC algorithms were applied to 200 patients. The ASE/EAE algorithm starts with assessment of diastolic myocardial wall velocities and left atrial (LA) volumes with subsequent assessment of E/A ratio, E-wave deceleration time and pulmonary venous flow. The TXC algorithm reverses these steps, uses LA dimension instead of volume and does not include a Valsalva manoeuvre and pulmonary venous flow. Due to inconsistencies between diastolic myocardial wall velocities and LA volumes and a not covered E/A ratio in the range of 1.5–2 it was not possible to classify 48 % of patients with the ASE/EAE algorithm, as opposed to only 10 % by the TXC algorithm. LA volume was always needed in the ASE/EAE algorithm. In only 64 % of patients LA size was necessary by the TXC algorithm. When LA volume would have been used instead of LA dimension, grading of LV diastolic function would have been different in only 2 % of patients without apparent improvement. Assessment of LA dimension was considerably faster than LA volume. The TXC algorithm to grade LV diastolic dysfunction was compared to the ASE/EAE algorithm simpler, faster, better reproducible and yields a higher diagnostic outcome