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The authors are a finance professor and an administrator in a major suburban independent school district who minored in finance while working toward his doctorate in education. We have used the case of shell space to discover the different incentives non-profit administrators have in the acquisition, recognition, and rational exercise of real options by their organizations (compared with managers of for-profit businesses). Shell space is space within a new building that has been enclosed against the elements, but not yet finished for its intended future use. The shell space can be viewed as a set of complex options (along the lines of the Stulz–Johnson options to choose among a group of several possible finished outcomes with different costs of exercise). A business executive could be expected to make the acquisition decision based on the value drivers know to impact such options. In the not-for-profit arena, though, decisions about the acquisition and use of options are driven by incentives that arise from within the organization or emanate from the politically elected (or appointed) board of trustees.

The German institutional setting of skill formation is supposed to enable young people smooth and structured transitions into the labor market. For decades, the large majority of graduates of the “dual system” of vocational education experienced good chances to immediately access appropriate job positions. However, labor market entry has become less stable in the last two decades. In this paper, we examine the changing transition from vocational training to the first job in Germany. We analyze the consequences of inter-firm mobility and unemployment after finishing vocational education for the transition to the first job. Our results show that leaving the training firm, and especially unemployment, strongly enhance occupational shifts at labor market entry. In addition, not keeping one’s trained occupation negatively affects the chances to enter skilled job positions.

This study explores the impact of parents’ and children’s early expectations on children’s later school persistence and completion of compulsory and secondary education, paying special attention to the parent-child agreement in early educational expectations. Results from analyzing longitudinal data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF) show that children often carry educational expectations quite different from their parents’. Consistent with previous research, children’s and their parents’ early expectations are strong predictors of children’s later educational attainment. More importantly, the analysis reveals that children benefit greatly when they share with their parents’ high expectations. Those children whose high expectations aligned with their parents fair best in later educational outcomes: They are more likely to complete compulsory education and secondary education. The combined determination of parents and children can help moderate the negative impact of poverty and facilitate children’s continued efforts in fulfilling their expectations. This positive impact holds even for children from the most impoverished families. This study points to the importance to recognize that there are non-material resources that family could provide to advance children’s education.

This study is a secondary analysis of attitudinal data collected by the World Values Study Group in 1990. Focus is upon differences in sex role ideology among the North American countries of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Specifically, efforts are made to determine if Mexico exhibits significantly more conservative attitudes about gender roles than its northern neighbors. Further emphasis will be placed upon determining whether or not the notion of “machismo” truly exists among Mexican males. The population consists of persons 18 years of age or older and was selected by stratified random sample in the United States and Canada, and quota sampling in Mexico. Weights are employed to ensure that the samples are nationally representative.

Findings suggest that, after the implementation of demographic and attitudinal controls, Mexicans are slightly more likely to exhibit more traditional attitudes about appropriate gender behavior. The “notion” of an element of “machismo” in Mexico, however, does not hold up to the rigors of statistical analysis. Instead, findings illustrate that being a male in Canada or the United States is more likely to predict conservative gender role ideology than being a male in Mexico. Nevertheless, being male was one of the weaker predictors of conservative gender ideologies in all of the models. Finally, the strongest correlations were between the dependent variable and the age at which the respondent finished school, age of respondent, and political ideology.

As I have reflected upon the last thirty years, since it was precisely thirty years ago that I started as a student at Stanford, I have wondered if there is an overall theme to how my professional career has unfolded and the role Stanford played in it. I believe Albert Bandura's (1982) paper, The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths, provides a good descriptive framework to work with. I am persuaded that at various points of time as I stood at the proverbial fork in the road, due to one chance factor or another, my decision was tipped one way. This is not to suggest that my career has been a sequence of random events; quite the contrary. While the specific fortuitous events occurred largely outside my control, my responses to them were quite systematic; some fortuitous events had lasting influence, and some even changed my life trajectory. But, what I am struck by, ex post, is that in 1973, as I was just finishing my undergraduate education in India, the ex ante probability of my ending up some years later as a professor at an Ivy League university was essentially zero. Yet, this did eventually happen.

My story is one of becoming a sociologist by accident. Throughout this story, I emphasize the turning points I took and those thrust upon me during my sociological journey. The turning points in my path to becoming a sociologist began during my childhood, although I could not have foreseen them. Both of my parents had experienced downward social mobility yet had managed to receive university degrees despite enduring hardships and living through the Great Depression. Gender roles circumscribed opportunities for girls who grew up in the 1950s. Thus, I entered a women's profession, occupational therapy. After a few years, my interest in teaching occupational therapy students led me back to graduate school to seek a master's degree in sociology at San Francisco State College. I gained a new worldview, although I soon learned that quantification and esoteric theorizing, not social issues, commanded the attention of most mid-1960s sociologists. I also learned that women sociologists had scant opportunities despite their qualifications but decided to seek a doctoral degree in sociology anyway. Eventually the University of California, San Francisco, accepted me in their first cohort of doctoral students and subsequently I worked closely with Anselm Strauss, my dissertation chair, and Barney Glaser, from whom I learned grounded theory. After finishing my dissertation, a temporary appointment at Sonoma State College turned into a tenure-track appointment. Although many years at Sonoma have been tumultuous, I have also had the privilege of developing a writing program to assist the faculty in their research and writing.