How Property Crime and Violent Crime Respond to a State Setting Their Minimum Wage Above the Federal Minimum Wage

Labor market conditions are known to be an important factor for determining crime rates. This is why policy makers suggest increasing the minimum wage can help reduce crime. The argument is based on the assumption that raising the minimum wage will not have undue negative employment effects and result in improving the legitimate labor market by enticing those who would commit crimes to enter the legitimate labor market. Using a cross-section of the 50 states, this study examines overall youth property crime and overall youth violent crime from the 2000-2016 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to determine what effect there is from a state setting their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage. I additionally examine the individual categories of youth property crime and youth violent crime to see if they behave similarly to the overall indices. My models use fixed effects panel estimation. There is a statistically significant negative effect from a state setting their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage on overall property crime and three of its categories. One category of property crime and one category of violent crime show a statistically significant positive effect from a state setting their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage. Overall violent crime and three of its categories do not show a statistically significant effect from a state setting their minimum wage above the federal minimum wage

Assessing the Robustness of Time-to-Event Abundance Estimation

Abundance estimates can inform management policies and are used to address a variety of wildlife research questions, but reliable estimates of abundance can be difficult and expensive to obtain. For low-density, difficult to detect species, such as cougars (Puma concolor), the costs and intensive field effort required to estimate abundance can make working at broad spatial and temporal scales impractical. Remote cameras have proven effective in detecting these species, but the widely applied methods of estimating abundance from remote cameras rely on some portion of the population being marked or uniquely identifiable, limiting their utility to populations with naturally occurring marks and populations that have been collared or tagged. Methods to estimate the abundance of unmarked populations with remote cameras have been proposed, but none have been widely adopted due, in part, to difficulties meeting the model assumptions. I examined the robustness of one model for estimating abundance of unmarked populations, the time-to-event model, to violating assumptions using walk simulations. I also tested the robustness of the time-to-event model to the low sample sizes of species that live at low densities by applying it alongside genetic spatial capture recapture on two populations of cougars (Puma concolor) in Idaho, USA. The time-to-event model is robust to many potential violations of assumptions but biased by incorrectly estimating movement speed and non-random sampling. The time-to-event model can effectively estimate the density of species living at low density and was more precise than and as reliable as genetic spatial capture recapture. Camera based abundance estimates that do not require individual identification, such as the time-to-event model, solve many of the challenges of monitoring low-density, difficult to detect species and make broad scale, multi-species monitoring more feasible

Examining the Utility of Time to Event Models for Abundance Estimation of a Solitary Carnivore

Abundance estimation is a common task in wildlife biology, but techniques to estimate the abundance of low density, difficult to detect species, such as cougars (Puma concolor), are limited, often requiring intensive field effort and incurring high costs. Remote cameras offer an effective means of detecting these species, but most abundance estimation methods using remote camera data rely on a portion of the population being marked or uniquely identifiable. Methods to estimate the abundance of populations without identifiable or marked individuals using remote cameras have assumptions that are difficult to meet in field studies. The recent application of time to event modelling to abundance estimation relaxes these assumptions, requiring only random movement with respect to the cameras, an estimate of movement rates, and a closed population. I will use simulated walk models to test the robustness of the time to event model to violations of these assumptions likely in field studies. I will apply the model to two cougar populations in central and southeastern Idaho, and compare the abundance estimates to concurrent estimates from genetic spatially explicit capture recapture

An exploration of member involvement with online brand communities (OBCs)

Despite growth in research investigating online consumer behaviour there appears to be a lack of study focusing specifically on how consumers are involved within online settings. Involvement is defined as the perceived relevance of a stimulus object such as a product to the individual consumer (Zaichkowsky, 1984). The study of consumer involvement is valuable as it is believed to be important mediator of consumer behaviour (e.g. Slater and Armstrong, 2010; Knox, Walker and Marshall, 1994). This study explores member involvement with Online Brand Communities (OBCs) focusing specifically on two questions: (1) What is involving about OBCs? (2) How are members involved with OBCs? The study employs a netnographic methodology consisting of participant observation of two OBCs over a nine month period. Based on the findings from the observation data two conceptual models relating to the characteristics and development of member involvement with the OBC are presented. The ‘Typology of Online Community Involvement’ model identifies four distinct types of member involvement with the OBC: (1) utilitarian involvement, (2) social involvement, (3) ego-related involvement, and (4) affective involvement. The ‘Journey of Member Involvement with the OBC’ model charts the different pathways that members who are involved with the OBC may undertake during their membership. The findings provide deeper insights into online consumer behaviour such as triggers that prompt members’ initial and continued involvement with OBCs. Recommendations for management focus on developing tools and strategies that help cultivate and sustain member involvement with the OBC

Last Wills

This short story collection, LAST WILLS, portrays four individuals' transitions into late adulthood. "Dan's Man Otto": an aging, socially estranged man attempts to cope with later-life struggles due to another man's fatal decision. "Yardsticks": a solitary woman confronts aging, for whom late adulthood becomes a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility for parole. "Balance Notification Nine": a career man encounters young buck against old stag workplace competition. "Deathbed Testament": an aging daughter's struggle to develop, at last, a way to cope with a lifelong identity crisis.  M.A

Exploring the rise of blockchain technology: Towards distributed collaborative organizations

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are playing an increasingly important role for organizations that seek to build social and solidarity-based finance. Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential disruptor for the financial industry. However, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology may help develop organizations that seek to build social and solidarity-based finance

Top managers & information systems: ‘Crossing the Rubicon’!

In reviewing the influence of information systems on today’s organisations, it becomes evident that top managers play a critical role in their inevitable success or failure. Yet, despite these systems strategic relevance many studies reveal a dichotomous relationship between ‘management’ and ‘information systems’, a relationship kept polarised by organisational myths resulting in the emergence of differing community perspectives. Such division is borne out in the increasingly high rates of information systems failure within practice. As strategic stewards of the organisation, top managers are noted to play a vital role in supporting information systems. Support is said to be a multifaceted concept requiring both thought and action. This paper in reviewing the information systems management literature attempts to unravel the mystery that has shrouded this topic over the past five decades. The journey seeks to provide top managers with a roadmap before Crossing the Rubicon to support the introduction of information systems

Exploring enterprise social systems & organisational change: Implementation in a digital age

Information systems (IS), since their introduction into organisations over five decades ago, have promised to streamline business processes, integrate disparate systems, increase innovation, and offer greater competitive advantage. Over the past decades, the evolution of Information Systems have mirrored many of the challenges experienced by our work organisations. For example, throughout the 1980s a primary concern for many organisations was the attainment of competitive advantage within their respective industries (Porter, 1980). The IS field responded by developing systems that sought to provide management with timely information to assist in making better strategic decisions, e.g. executive support and decision support systems. In the 1990s, organisations began to look inwards searching for key strategic resources that would yield unique core competencies (Barney, 1991). Similarly, the IS field responded by building highly integrative enterprise-wide systems (Davenport, 1998), which would unite every pillar of the organisation with a single transparent view of firm competencies and business processes, viz Enterprise Systems. The first decade of the 21st century continued in this vein, with organisations extending their global reach through new and innovative business models (Johnson et al, 2008). Similarly, IS have responded with the emergence of digital technologies and their continued growth as transformative organisational systems enabling boundary-less corporate structures, 24/7 real-time customer-centric communication, collaborative supply chain environments, and virtual IS infrastructures delivered via cloud computing

Cyber resiliency for digital enterprises: A strategic leadership perspective

As organizations increasingly view information as one of their most valuable assets, which supports the creation and distribution of their products and services, information security will be an integral part of the design and operation of organizational business processes. Yet, risks associated with cyber attacks are on the rise. Organizations that are subjected to attacks can suffer significant reputational damage as well as loss of information and knowledge. As a consequence, effective leadership is cited as a critical factor for ensuring corporate level attention for information security. However, there is a lack of empirical understanding as to the roles strategic leaders play in shaping and supporting the cyber security strategy. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature by focusing on how senior leaders support the cyber security strategy. The authors conducted a series of exploratory interviews with leaders in the positions of Chief Information Officer, Chief Security Information Officer, and Chief Technology Officer. The findings revealed that leaders are engaged in both transitional, where the focus is on improving governance and integration, and transformational support, which involves fostering a new cultural mindset for cyber resiliency and the development of an ecosystem approach to security thinking. Managerial relevance statement Our findings provide interesting insights for managers particularly those in the role of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Security Information Officers (CSIOs), and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). We propose a Cyber Security Strategy Framework (CSSF) which can be used by these information/technology managers to design an effective organizational strategy to develop cyber resilience in their organization. Our framework suggests that managers should focus on transitional and transformational support. The transitional support focuses on improving governance and integration whereas transformational support focuses on the emphasis of fostering a new cultural mindset for cyber resiliency and the development of an ecosystem approach to security thinking. Our findings provide good evidence showing how leaders can support more effective cyber security initiatives

Investigating the benefits and challenges of Total Quality Management implementation in the pharmaceutical companies

Pharmaceutical companies in Eastern European region are facing urgent quality tools implementation due to fierce global competition. The aim of this research is to provide current understanding of TQM in this region and provide further guidance on how to improve quality standards and techniques. The study follows a qualitative method and data was collected through 5 semi-structured interviews. The study highlights that TQM in pharmaceutical industry in this region is not well developed. The findings shows that there is lack of senior management commitment to TQM principles explanation and emphasises on its importance. Additionally, lack of governmental influence on quality standards and budgeting problems also affects TQM development. Moreover, there is a believe that TQM will not influence the overall performance of the company in the positive manner, since the development of such quality improvement method has to be efficiently budgeted and under current economic and political circumstances it is not possible.N/