In-Game, In-Room, In-World: Reconnecting Video Game Play to the Rest of Kids' Lives

Part of the Volume on the Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning The focus of this chapter is on how young people learn to play video games. We have approached this question ethnographically, studying young people playing in their own homes among friends and family. The primary data analyzed for the chapter are videorecordings of play from two perspectives -- in-game and in-room -- which we synchronized into a single side-by-side video record. By looking at in-room actions along with in-game actions, the chapter expands on a separate worlds view that holds video games as a world apart from the rest of kids' lives. Our case material shows instead how game play is quite tangled up with young people's lives, including relations with siblings and parents, patterns of learning at home and school, as well their own imagined futures. Our analysis also documents a remarkable diversity of what we call learning arrangements that young people create among themselves while playing together

Can Employee Share-Ownership Improve Employee Attitudes and Behaviour?

Purpose: To examine the outcomes of a substantial broad-based employee share-ownership scheme for employee attitudes and behaviour in a privatised firm. Methodology: Results are based on a survey of 711 employees in Eircom, an Irish telecommunications firm, which is 35 percent employee-owned. Findings: The ESOP has created sizable financial returns and has had extensive influence in firm governance at the strategic level. However, findings show only a limited impact on employee attitudes and behaviour. This is attributed to a failure in creating a sense of employee participation and line of sight between employee performance and reward. Originality: Little research has examined the impact of a large employee shareholding on attitudes and behaviour within a public-quoted firm. The substantial and unparalleled size of the Eircom ESOP presented a unique opportunity to conduct such a study. Policy implications: The aim of employee share-ownership often includes aligning employee objectives with those of other shareholders, and thus improving labour performance. The findings in this study highlight a need to provide employees with a sense of ownership and control. Findings also question the assumption that where employees have a substantial shareholding, they will focus on securing the long-term prospects of the firm

Changing the Rules of the Game: The Impact of Privatization on Firm Industrial Relations

This paper examines the impact of privatization on the relative bargaining strength of management and trade unions. Findings are based on a study of Ireland’s largest telecoms provider, Eircom, which has been privatized since 1999. The privatization of Eircom adopted a stakeholder approach, under which employee share-ownership and management-union partnership played an important role in firm restructuring. Findings show that despite this approach privatization has resulted in a significant decrease in the perceived bargaining strength of unions and an increase in the perceived bargaining strength of management

The impact of Privatisation and Employee Share-Ownership on Employee Commitment and Citizen Behaviour

Based on a survey of employees in a large telecommunications company, we examine the means through which privatisation, accompanied by an Employee Share-Ownership Plan (ESOP), impact on employee commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour. Findings show that although the ESOP has in some way moderated outcomes, privatisation has had negative consequences for commitment. Despite this, 50 percent of respondents report an increased level of citizenship behaviour. In determining changes in employee commitment and behaviour, it was found that an important role is played by how employees perceive changes in conditions of employment, involvement in workplace decision-making and management-union collaboration

JonDoyleExtending Mechanics to Minds: The Mechanical Foundations of Psychology and Economics2006Cambridge University Press

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Simple Measures of Convergence in Per Capita GDP: A Note on Some Further International Evidence

We apply simple measures of convergence in per capita GDP, namely, the trends in the coefficient of variation (sigma-convergence) and rank concordance (gamma-convergence), for the period 1960-1992 to a wide group of countries which are classified using the World Bank typology. The findings indicate sigma-convergence,albeit at a slow rate, for "High Income" and "Upper Middle Income" countries, very slow to negligible convergence for "Lower Middle Income" countries and divergence for "Low Income" countries. Our results also suggest several periods for all country categories when sigma- convergence is constant. However, since we do not find gamma-convergence during these episodes, we conclude that beta-convergence is not demonstrated. The rank concordance measure emerges as significant only from about the late 1980s, save in the case of "Low Income" countries where "leap frogging" is observed from about 1981. The implications of these results for the neoclassical growth model are discussed.Economic Growth

On the K-theory of truncated polynomial algebras over the integers

We show that the K_{2i}(Z[x]/(x^m),(x)) is finite of order (mi)!(i!)^{m-2} and that K_{2i+1}(Z[x]/(x^m),(x)) is free abelian of rank m-1. This is accomplished by showing that the equivariant homotopy groups of the topological Hochschild spectrum THH(Z) are finite, in odd degrees, and free abelian, in even degrees, and by evaluating their orders and ranks, respectively.Comment: Journal of Topology (to appear

The properties of the star-forming interstellar medium at z = 0.84-2.23 from HiZELS : mapping the internal dynamics and metallicity gradients in high-redshift disc galaxies.

We present adaptive optics assisted, spatially resolved spectroscopy of a sample of nine Hα-selected galaxies at z = 0.84-2.23 drawn from the HiZELS narrow-band survey. These galaxies have star formation rates of 1-27 M⊙ yr-1 and are therefore representative of the typical high-redshift star-forming population. Our ˜kpc-scale resolution observations show that approximately half of the sample have dynamics suggesting that the ionized gas is in large, rotating discs. We model their velocity fields to infer the inclination-corrected, asymptotic rotational velocities. We use the absolute B-band magnitudes and stellar masses to investigate the evolution of the B-band and stellar-mass Tully-Fisher relationships. By combining our sample with a number of similar measurements from the literature, we show that, at fixed circular velocity, the stellar mass of star-forming galaxies has increased by a factor of 2.5 between z = 2 and 0, whilst the rest-frame B-band luminosity has decreased by a factor of ˜ 6 over the same period. Together, these demonstrate a change in mass-to-light ratio in the B band of Δ(M/LB)/(M/LB)z=0 ˜ 3.5 between z = 1.5 and 0, with most of the evolution occurring below z = 1. We also use the spatial variation of [N II]/Hα to show that the metallicity of the ionized gas in these galaxies declines monotonically with galactocentric radius, with an average Δ log(O/H)/ΔR = -0.027 ± 0.005 dex kpc-1. This gradient is consistent with predictions for high-redshift disc galaxies from cosmologically based hydrodynamic simulations