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This chapter examines the implications of career achievement for divorce, and whether they differ for men and women. Consistent with theory suggesting that women’s workplace achievement violates traditional expectations of gender and marriage, therefore creating domestic strain, the authors predict that career achievement is associated with a greater risk of divorce for women, but not for men. Using data from the Academy Awards, the authors find that for women, a sudden shift in achievement from winning an Oscar increases their risk of divorce compared to Best Actress nominees. There was no difference in the risk of divorce between Best Actor winners and nominees. The authors additionally examine two potential mitigating factors: whether the actor was already successful at the time of their marriage, and whether their spouse was comparably successful. For Best Actress winners, but not for Best Actor winners, the authors find evidence for the latter, indicating that women’s marriages are more stable when spouses are equally successful, or when relative achievement within the couple aligns with broadly-held norms of traditional marriage.

Children experience toxic stress if there is pronounced activation of their stress-response systems, in situations in which they do not have stable caregiving. Due to their exposure to multiple poverty-related risks, African American children may be more susceptible to exposure to toxic stress. Toxic stress affects young children’s brain and neurophysiologic functioning, which leads to a wide range of deleterious health, developmental, and mental health outcomes. Given the benefits of early care and education (ECE) for African American young children, ECE may represent a compensating experience for this group of children, and promote their positive development.

We investigate how firms’ responses to misconduct change when the institutional environment becomes more stringent. Organizational theory offers conflicting perspectives on whether new legislation will increase or decrease pressure on firms to take remedial action following misconduct. The dominant perspective posits that new legislation increases expectations of firm behavior, amplifying pressure on them to take remedial action after misconduct. A more recent perspective, however, suggests that the mere necessity to meet more stringent regulatory requirements certifies firms as legitimate to relevant audiences. This certification effect buffers firms, reducing the pressure for them to take remedial action after misconduct. Using a temporary, largely arbitrary exemption from a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we show that firms that were not required to meet all the regulatory standards of good governance it required became 45% more likely to replace their CEOs following the announcement of an earnings restatement after Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, those that were required to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley’s provisions became 26% less likely to replace their CEOs following a restatement announcement. Ironically, CEOs at firms with a legislative mandate intended to increase accountability for corporate misconduct shoulder less blame than do CEOs at firms without such legislative demands.

This study used confirmatory factor analysis to analyze the secondary data resulting from a service quality survey conducted by a large public library. The library outsourced the development of this survey, which was founded on the well-recognized SERVQUAL and LibQUAL+ service quality models. Applying structural equation modeling and recognized fit indexes to the secondary data, this study determined that the library model did not fit the data and that the data itself were neither reliable nor valid. This study developed a nine-step process for implementing the SERVQUAL model that enables the data derived from SERVQUAL-type implementations to provide superior information for decision making.