Including Social Service Clients in the Organizational Decision Making Process

Empowerment of clients is a goal of many social service organizations and yet a concept that is hard to define and often complicated to implement. This professional project looks at the importance and practice of empowering parents in a teenage pregnancy prevention program through a case study. A survey of parents supported the idea of empowering practices leading to parents becoming partners with the organization in the education of the community. In a qualitative study, this researcher offers the practice of taking empowerment a step further in asking participants of the program to take part in the decision of what should be next for the program

Virtual Analysis and Reduction of Side-Channel Vulnerabilities of Smartcards

This paper focuses on the usability of the PINPAS tool. The PINPAS tool is an instruction-level interpreter for smartcard assembler languages, augmented with facilities to study side-channel vulnerabilities. The tool can simulate side-channel leakage and has a suite of utilities to analyze this. The usage of the tool, for the analysis of a cryptographic algorithm is illustrated using the standard AES and RSA. Vulnerabilities of the implementations are identified and protective measures added. It is argued, that the tool can be instrumental for the design and realization of secure smartcard implementations in a systematic wa

Metric Semantics and Full Abstractness for Action Refinement and Probabilistic Choice

This paper provides a case-study in the field of metric semantics for probabilistic programming. Both an operational and a denotational semantics are presented for an abstract process language L_pr, which features action refinement and probabilistic choice. The two models are constructed in the setting of complete ultrametric spaces, here based on probability measures of compact support over sequences of actions. It is shown that the standard toolkit for metric semantics works well in the probabilistic context of L_pr, e.g. in establishing the correctness of the denotational semantics with respect to the operational one. In addition, it is shown how the method of proving full abstraction --as proposed recently by the authors for a nondeterministic language with action refinement-- can be adapted to deal with the probabilistic language L_pr as well

Innovative Work Behaviour: Measurement and Validation

Although both scientists and practitioners emphasize the importance of innovative work behavior (IWB) of individual employees for organizational success, the measurement of employees' IWB is still in evolution. Here, we present two multi-source studies that aimed to develop and validate a measure of IWB. Four related dimensions of IWB are distinguished: opportunity exploration, idea generation, championing and application. We derived a tenitem measure of these IWB dimensions from a pilot survey among matched dyads of 81 professionals in a research institute and their supervisors. Next, a survey among a matching sample of 703 knowledge workers and their supervisors from 94 different firms was done. We used confirmatory factor analyses to examine convergent and discriminant validity, and hierarchical multilevel regression to test hypothesized relationships of IWB with participative leadership, external work contacts and innovative output (proposed as an initial nomological network). Results demonstrate strong convergent validity of the IWB measure as all four dimensions contribute to an overall measure of IWB. Support for discriminant validity is weaker as correlations between some dimensions are relatively high. Finally, IWB is positively related with participative leadership, external work contacts and innovative output, providing first evidence for nomological validity.

Leadership as a determinant of innovative behaviour

In knowledge-intensive services innovative behaviour of co-workers is a critical success factor. In sectors like consultancy, research and architecture the nature of the work implies that projects are never alike. Innovative behaviour means that co-workers generate ideas for better and/or different products, services or working methods, and strive for implementing such changes. By carrying out certain leadership styles, entrepreneurs are able to boost innovative behaviour of their employees. This study presents an overview of innovation-enhancing leadership styles.

Is human resource management profitable for small firms?

The impact of high performance work systems on labour productivity and profit of small and medium sized enterprises. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the 2005 conference of the Dutch HRM Network on HRM and performance (held on 4 and 5 November of that year) and the invited workshop 'Entrepreneurship from the employee's perspective' at the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena (Februari 2006). The paper presented at the Mack Planck Institute has been published as EIM Scales Paper N200520. The research presented in this paper focuses on the effectiveness of a high performance work system. This system is comprised of practices in the areas of extensiveness of staffing, performance based pay, pay level, job rotation, training and participation. In particular, this study focuses on the effects of such a system on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises. Results of our study, among small and medium size enterprises in the Netherlands, show that firms with such a system have higher labour productivity, are more innovative and generate higher profits.� These results suggest that high performance work systems are not only relevant in large corporations, but may also benefit small firms.

The risk of growing fast

Are firm growth and firm survival related to each other? This paper tests the hypothesis that the relationship between firm growth and firm survival can be characterised by an inverted U-shaped relation. This hypothesis is confirmed by our estimations. At the same time, the results indicate that the top of the inverted U-shaped relation occurs at very high growth rates. This suggests that for the large majority of enterprises, the relationship between firm growth and firm survival can be better described by a positive relationship rather than an inverted U-shaped relationship. Although these results are preliminary, they suggest that policies that aim to increase the number of fast-growing firms have no negative effects on the rate of firm deaths.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2009 The Netherlands

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is a research program executed annually with the aim to obtain internationally comparative high quality research data on entrepreneurial activity at the national level. This academic research consortium started as a partnership between the London Business School and Babson College in 1999 and started with 10 participating countries in this same year. Over the years GEM has expanded to comprise 54 countries in 2009. Currently, GEM is the single largest study of entrepreneurial activity in the world. The GEM research program provides a harmonized assessment of the level of national entrepreneurial activity and conditions to which it is subject for all participating countries. The Netherlands has participated in GEM since 2001.