Empowerment in the Public Sector: Testing the Influence of Goal Orientation

Empowerment has emerged as an important new issue in the public sector organization setting in the wake of mainstream new public management (NPM). Nevertheless, few studies in this frame have combined structural (managerial) and psychological (individual) approaches in an integrative study of empowerment. There is also a need to examine the moderating variables involved in this relationship, as well as to extend research on work motivation in public management. This study explores the effect of structural empowerment on psychological empowerment, and it also draws on goal orientation (GO) theory to examine the moderating role of employees’ GO in this link. The model is tested on a sample of 521 Spanish local authority employees. The results do not confirm the direct link between structural and psychological empowerment, but show that learning GO has considerable moderating power in this relationship, and its interaction with structural empowerment affects employees’ psychological empowerment levels

Thermal contact resistance in a non-ideal joint

The contact conductance at an interface can be determined by knowing the material and surface properties and the interfacial pressure distribution. This pressure distribution can be influenced strongly by the roughness of the mating surfaces but until now this effect has been ignored in studies of joint conductance. This thesis considers this effect and shows the circumstances when it is an important factor. Furthermore, it is shown that one can either raise or lower the total resistance of a joint by changing the surface properties in the proper manner for the particular system being considered. Specifically, this thesis deals with three systems: the contact of two rough, wavy surfaces; the contact of two rough but nominally flat plates pressed together over a concentrated area; and the contact of two rough but nominally flat plates bolted together. In each case the pressure distribution is calculated as a function of the surface properties. In the case of wavy surfaces it is found that all necessary information for any combination of parameters can be reduced to one master graph. In the other two cases one such graph is needed for each geometry used. The resulting pressure distributions are used in a specific heat transfer example and the total joint resistance versus roughness is presented. It is shown how one can actually decrease the resistance by increasing the roughness - a seemingly contradictory phenomenon. Heat transfer experiments performed by Joseph Pigott qualitatively confirmed the theoretical findings.Sponsored by George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, NAS

Localized form of Fock terms in nuclear covariant density functional theory

In most of the successful versions of covariant density functional theory in nuclei, the Fock terms are not included explicitly, which leads to local functionals and forms the basis of their widespread applicability at present. However, it has serious consequences for the description of Gamow-Teller resonances (GTR) and spin-dipole resonances (SDR) which can only be cured by adding further phenomenological parameters. Relativistic Hartree-Fock models do not suffer from these problems. They can successfully describe the GTR and SDR as well as the isovector part of the Dirac effective mass without any additional parameters. However, they are non-local and require considerable numerical efforts. By the zero-range reduction and the Fierz transformation, a new method is proposed to take into account the Fock terms in local functionals, which retains the simplicity of conventional models and provides proper descriptions of the spin-isospin channels and the Dirac masses.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Rev. C in pres

Imperfect Imitation Can Enhance Cooperation

The promotion of cooperation on spatial lattices is an important issue in evolutionary game theory. This effect clearly depends on the update rule: it diminishes with stochastic imitative rules whereas it increases with unconditional imitation. To study the transition between both regimes, we propose a new evolutionary rule, which stochastically combines unconditional imitation with another imitative rule. We find that, surprinsingly, in many social dilemmas this rule yields higher cooperative levels than any of the two original ones. This nontrivial effect occurs because the basic rules induce a separation of timescales in the microscopic processes at cluster interfaces. The result is robust in the space of 2x2 symmetric games, on regular lattices and on scale-free networks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Investigation of negative cloud radiative forcing over the Indian subcontinent and adjacent oceans during the summer monsoon season

ACPDRadiative properties of clouds over the Indian subcontinent and nearby oceanic regions (0-25° N, 60-100° E) during the Asian summer monsoon season (June-September) are investigated using the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) flux data. Using multi-year satellite data, the net cloud radiative forcing (NETCRF) at the TOA over the Indian region during the Asian monsoon season is examined. The seasonal mean NETCRF is found to be negative (with its magnitude exceeding ~ 30 W m−2) over (1) the northern Bay of Bengal (close to the Myanmar-Thailand coast), (2) the Western Ghats and (3) the coastal regions of Myanmar. Such strong negative NETCRF values observed over the Indian monsoon region contradicts the assumption that near cancellation between LWCRF and SWCRF is a generic property of all tropical convective regions. The seasonal mean cloud amount (high and upper middle) and corresponding cloud optical depth observed over the three regions show relatively large values compared to rest of the Indian monsoon region. Using satellite derived cloud data, a statistical cloud vertical model delineating the cloud cover and single scattering albedo was developed for the three negative NETCRF regions. The shortwave (SW), longwave (LW) and net cloud radiative forcing over the three negative NETCRF regions are calculated using the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM) with cloud vertical model as input. The NETCRF estimated from CERES observations show good comparison with that computed using RRTM (within the uncertainty limit of CERES observations). Sensitivity tests are conducted using RRTM to identify the parameters that control the negative NETCRF observed over these regions during the summer monsoon season. Increase in atmospheric water vapor content during the summer monsoon season is found to influence the negative NETCRF values observed over the region

A description of the f2(1270), rho3(1690), f4(2050), rho5(2350) and f6(2510) resonances as multi-rho(770) states

In a previous work regarding the interaction of two $\rho(770)$ resonances, the $f_2(1270)$ ($J^{PC}=2^{++}$) resonance was obtained dynamically as a two-$\rho$ molecule with a very strong binding energy, 135~MeV per $\rho$ particle. In the present work we use the $\rho\rho$ interaction in spin 2 and isospin 0 channel to show that the resonances $\rho_3(1690)$ ($3^{--}$), $f_4(2050)$ ($4^{++}$), $\rho_5(2350)$ ($5^{--}$) and $f_6(2510)$ ($6^{++}$) are basically molecules of increasing number of $\rho(770)$ particles. We use the fixed center approximation of the Faddeev equations to write the multi-body interaction in terms of the two-body scattering amplitudes. We find the masses of the states very close to the experimental values and we get an increasing value of the binding energy per $\rho$ as the number of $\rho$ mesons is increased.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Examining nonlinear relationships between quality management and financial performance

Purpose A thorough analysis of nonlinear relationships between quality management (QM) and organizational outcomes has largely been ignored in the current empirical QM literature, which can have profound theoretical and managerial implications. The existence of nonlinear relationships implies taking a contingent view in that QM practices are more effective depending on their level of implementation in an organization. The purpose of this paper is to focus on this possibility and undertake an in-depth study of the sparse nonlinear relationship suggested by the literature. Design/methodology/approach The authors introduce an empirical study carried out on a sample of 168 service firms belonging to sectors experienced in QM and, through polynomial regression analysis, identify the nature of the relationship between QM and financial performance (return on assets). Findings The results, by showing an S-shaped curve, support a nonlinear association between these two variables. The presence of this functional form provides a satisfactory solution to the growing debate among researchers who, from a linear perspective, defend the positive effects of QM on organizational outcomes, those who find no significant effect, and still others who claim that QM has a negative effect. Originality/value The results show that in organizations with a low level of QM implementation, managers should increase investment in QM, even though this increase will not be correspondingly beneficial in the same proportion. In contrast, in organizations with a high level of QM implementation, managers are advised to reflect on undertaking projects that represent an additional investment in QM, with the aim of finding their optimal level