Middle manager’s innovative work behavior and their social network position:A search on slippery ice

Central to this dissertation is the question why some middle managers are more innovative than others. This question has been examined from three related perspectives. A primary role of middle managers consists of analyzing, processing and passing on information. Middle managers maintain intensive contacts with, among others, other middle managers. Therefore it has been investigated how the structure of a social network facilitates or limits innovative behavior. Secondly, it was investigated to what extent individual characteristics influence innovative behavior. Individual characteristics determine how a middle manager deals with opportunities and restraints. The third factor focuses on the complexity of modern organizations. Middle managers often operate in organizations with multiple locations that are at a certain distance from the head office and in complex partnerships such as franchising or joint ventures. Such complex structures influence the autonomy and thus possibly the innovative behavior of middle managers. Three empirical studies have been carried out: Students of a business school, an international company with a complex organizational structure and multiple locations, and the administration of a municipality in Mexico City. In addition, a simulation study was carried out to determine an optimal strategy for dealing with missing data in the network analyses carried out. The results suggest that innovative behavior of middle managers is likely to be influenced by individual differences in personality and goal orientation. Potential influences of network position were not found. Influence of organizational factors related to autonomy could not be identified

Missing behavior data in longitudinal network studies:the impact of treatment methods on estimated effect parameters in stochastic actor oriented models

Research into missing network data is growing, with a focus on the impact of missing ties on network statistics or network model parameters. Longitudinal network studies using stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) focus on the co-evolution of network structure and behavior/attributes to disentangle influence and selection mechanisms. Still little is known about the impact of missing behavior data on estimated effect parameters in SAOMs. This paper examines seven different methods that are currently available to deal with missing behavior data: complete cases, three single imputation procedures (imputing the mean, random hot deck, nearest neighbor hot deck), one multiple imputation procedure (based on predictive mean matching), and two methods available in the RSIENA software to estimate SAOMs (default method based on imputation and available cases, and a method based on dummy variables). In a simulation study based on four real-life data sets, the impact of these methods on estimated parameters of SAOMS was investigated. Missing behavior data were created under different conditions (proportions, mechanisms), and the missing data methods were used to estimate SAOMs on the incomplete data. The effect of the missing data methods was inspected using three criteria: model convergence, parameter bias, and parameter coverage. The results show that, in general, the default method available in the RSIENA software gives the best outcomes for all three criteria. The dummy-based method generally performed worse than the default method, as did the imputation procedures. The multiple imputation procedure sometimes outperformed the single imputations and the three single imputation methods often gave the same results. The effects of missing data mechanism and data set were small

Touchpoint analysis of zoo: Een benchmark die grip geeft op de beleving van dierentuinbezoekers

In dit rapport heeft CELTH onderzocht wat de relatie is tussen tevredenheid en beleving, en in welke mate die beleving afhangt van specifieke momenten tijdens een dagje uit in dierentuinen. De resultaten die besproken worden in dit rapport geven inzicht in de verschillende manieren waarop dierentuinen beleefd worden. Daarnaast wordt duidelijk welke ontwerp attributen (touchpoints) bijdragen aan verschillende typen beleving. Dit rapport is daarmee de eerste belevingsbenchmark voor deze specifieke sector

De Waddendijk: kansen voor een uniek vrijetijdslandschap

Dit rapport is een voorstel voor het in kaart brengen van de mogelijkheden voor toeristische en recreatieve ontwikkelingen langs de Waddendijk. Een groeiende hoeveelheid initiatieven en plannen in dit gebied duidt op een behoefte aan vernieuwing, een vernieuwing die soms nodig wordt geacht om de gevolgen van bevolkingskrimp te verzachten en de leefbaarheid te vergroten, soms door de economische potentie die letterlijk aan dit gebied voorbijgaat omdat alle bezoekers naar de eilanden varen, soms ook gewoon door trots op het gebied en de overtuiging dat de cultuur en het landschap van de Waddenkust ook voor bezoekers een verrijkende ervaring kunnen betekenen