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While job insecurity generally impedes performance, there may be circumstances under which it can prompt performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine a specific situation (reorganization) in which job insecurity may prompt task and contextual performance. The authors propose that performance can represent a job preservation strategy, to which employees may only resort when supervisor-issued ratings of performance are instrumental toward securing one’s job. The authors hypothesize that because of this instrumentality, job insecurity will motivate employees’ performance only when they have low intrinsic motivation, and only when they perceive high distributive justice.

In a survey study among 103 permanent employees of a company in reorganization, the authors assessed perceived job insecurity, intrinsic motivation and perceived distributive justice. Supervisors rated employees’ overall performance (task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors).

Multilevel analyses showed that job insecurity was only positively related to supervisor-rated overall performance among employees with low intrinsic motivation and, unexpectedly, among employees who experienced low distributive justice. Results were cross-validated using employees’ self-rated performance, replicating the findings on distributive justice but not the findings on intrinsic motivation.

The results can inform future research on the specific situations in which job insecurity may prompt job preservation efforts, and call for research to uncover the mechanisms underlying employees’ negative and positive responses to job insecurity. The results and associated implications of this study are largely based on conceptual evidence. In addition, the cross-sectional design warrants precaution about drawing causal inferences from the data.

By combining insights from coping responses and threat foci, this study advances the understanding of when and why job insecurity may prompt performance.

This chapter examines the existence of dynamic herding behavior by Tunisian investors in the Tunisia stock market during the revolution period of 2011–2013. The sample covers all Tunindex daily returns as a proxy for the Tunisia stock exchange index over the period 2007–2018. The author modifies the cross-sectional absolute deviation model to include all market conditions (bull and bear markets) and the geopolitical crisis effect corresponding to the Tunisian Jasmine revolution during 2011–2013, and show that herding is indeed not present in the Tunisia stock market including during its turmoil periods. These findings imply that the Tunisian emerging financial market became more vulnerable to adverse herding behavior after the revolution. There is also a clear implication for capitalist firms and angel investors in Tunisia that adverse herding behavior tends to exist on days of higher uncertainty and information asymmetry.

The purpose of this paper is to study a novel and direct measurement of investor sentiment index in the Tunisian stock market that overcomes the weaknesses of a well-known investor sentiment index by Baker and Wurgler (2006, 2007).

Based on the data of 43 firms of the Tunisian stock market index (Tunindex) over the period 2004–2016, the author constructs a monthly investor sentiment that reflects both the economic fundamentals and the investor sentiment components. Seven indirect indicators collected from investor sentiment literature and Tunisian stock exchange were analyzed. Specifically, after accounting to remove the sentiment component for macroeconomic factors, the author estimates each sentiment proxy with a number of controlling variables. The residual from the estimation is used to define the author’s measure of excessive investor sentiment. To determine the best timing of sentiment indicators, the author employs a factor sentiment series as the first principal component of these total seven sentiment proxies and their lags of a month. Furthermore, by capturing the highest saturations with the first factor analysis, the author regressed each selected indicator’s lead or one-month lag in a second linear principal component analysis to reach the author’s Tunisian market’s total sentiment index.

The results show that all employed indicators may reflect the investor sentiment on the Tunisian stock market. The findings also indicate significant evidence that the author’s sentiment index takes into consideration the political and economic events such as the Jasmine Revolution experienced by Tunisia during the period from January 2, 2004 to December 30, 2016. Moreover, investor sentiment index flow appears to be one leading mechanism for the performance of Tunindex.

Results found have clearly shown that the author’s seven indirect indicators can reflect investor sentiment in the Tunisian context. The various sentiment proxies are bullish indicators of investor sentiment. Brown and Cliff (2004) argue that the higher bull/bear ratio, the more investor sentiment is bullish. An important value of price–earnings ratio implies that the level of investor confidence as for change in market is also important. Liquidity measured by trading volume, market turnover ratio and liquidity ratio reflects individual investor sentiment. Otherwise, it seems that investors only invest when they are optimistic and reduce market liquidity once they became pessimistic. The monthly response rate to initial public offerings (IPOs) represents a bullish sentiment indicator. Indeed, the more optimistic investors are, the higher the response rate to IPOs. Investor satisfaction also reflects investor sentiment. In other words, a high level of satisfaction translates an important level of optimism. In addition, the author also recognizes that the authors’ Tunisian sentiment index follow general trend of stock market prices and appears to be an important determinant of Tunindex returns during the period of study, from January, 2004 to December, 2016. The author suggests investor sentiment can help predict Tunindex returns, distinguishing between turbulent and tranquil periods in the financial market. The graphical illustration of monthly investor sentiment index shows that it captures extreme events such as the Tunisian revolution of January, 2011, also known as the Jasmine revolution which marked the start of the Arab Spring and the consequences of economic and political turmoil in Tunisia that have disrupted economic activity in the next few years. Like all research work, the current research paper has certain limitations. The choice of control variables allowing the author to separate sentiment component of that fundamental might be criticized. Moreover, there is no unanimous number of control variables but they are chosen according to data availability. The author also believes that one of the study’s weaknesses is that the author has not examined the impact of investor sentiment on the Tunisian stock market. For future interesting avenues of research, the author proposes, first, to study the effect of investor sentiment on financial asset returns and check, second, if sentiment factor constitutes an additional source of business risk valued by the marketplace.

This article aims to examine the history, mechanisms, interconnectedness and effectiveness of the jasmine-growing enterprise in coastal Karnataka. This article investigates the formation and ongoing successful operation of a community enterprise that is locally originated and administered. The case of the jasmine flower growers in coastal Karnataka is a case of small-scale growers who for 75 years have operated a long-standing local community-based enterprise. Using trust, repeated interactions and efficient mechanisms of pricing and distribution, this enterprise has prevented poverty among its participants for three generations.

This article provides a descriptive analysis of the enterprise as well as results from an empirical study of 700 growers. The article used cluster analysis of local villages to represent the 7,000 participating households.

Studying local growers who are the producers of the flowers and who are living off of it, this article found a high level of satisfaction and trust towards those running the enterprise. For many people in the region, this ongoing enterprise is the difference between poverty and hunger and living well.

The article is based on one local community that is lucky to have a desired resource (one type of jasmine flower) coveted by many users.

Combined, this article provides an account of a unique and successful sustainable enterprise, initiated and run at the grassroots level, which serves as a model for future economic development. In addition, it lists the features that are most relevant for the ongoing success of the enterprise and suggests how a new social and economic development project can learn from this enterprise.

This is an amazing enterprise that was not studied before and can be a role model for many adaptations.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between a commercial bank’s micro-loaning activity and overall performance over a 10-year period.

Quarterly data was obtained from the Wind Database, China Minsheng Banks’s official annual reports and annual corporate social responsibility reports from 2009 to 2019, to test the linear relationship between micro-loan activities and the overall financial performance of the bank.

The results of this study empirically demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between increases in micro-loaning activity and the overall performance of the bank. Some key recommendations for the sector are shared in the conclusion of this paper.

In the financial sector, some corporate social responsibility activities focus on the issuance of micro-loans. It is unclear, however, if this has also served as a means to increase profitability and overall performance for such institutions.

This study examines the relationship between decisions of arbitrators and the accounts provided by grievants in a sample of discipline arbitration cases. It was hypothesized that arbitrators' decisions would be influenced by both the type of accounts used (refusals, excuses, and justifications) and the quality of accounts. The results suggest that grievants providing refusals are most likely to have their suspensions reduced, and grievants providing justifications are least likely to have their suspensions reduced Also, the quality of accounts influences reduction in suspension. These findings help broaden our understanding of the arbitration decision‐making process and explain how grievants' accounts can bias arbitrators' decisions. Implications for policy‐makers, management, employees, and unions are provided, along with suggestions for future research.

The purpose of the present work is to mathematically model the reliability growth of a multi-version software system that is affected by infected patches.

The work presents a mathematical model that studies the reliability change due to the insertion of an infected patch in multi-version software. Various distribution functions have been considered to highlight the varied aspects of the model. Furthermore, weighted criteria approach has been discussed to facilitate the choice of the model.

The model presented here is able to quantify the effect of an infected patch on multi-version software. The model captures the hike in bug content due to an infected patch.

Multi-version systems have been studied widely, but the role of an infected patch has not been yet explored. The effect of an infected patch has been quantified by modeling the extra bugs generated in the system. This bug count would prove helpful in further studies for optimal resource allocation and testing effort allocation.

This study used a critical incidents methodology to examine the influence of accounts on perceived social loafing and evaluations of team member, and to investigate the face management and responsibility explanations of account‐giving. The results of this study suggest that communicative acts such as accounts may reduce perceived loafing. In addition, perceived loafing and evaluations of the team member were influenced by the type of account provided; concessions were more effective in decreasing perceptions of social loafing and increasing evaluations of the team member than excuses and justifications which, in turn, were more effective than refusals. These findings indicate tentative support for the face management explanation of account effectiveness.

In evolutionary robotics (ER), robotic control systems are subject to a developmental process inspired by natural evolution. The purpose of this paper is to utilize a control system representation based on finite state machines (FSMs) to build a decentralized online‐evolutionary framework for swarms of mobile robots.

A new recombination operator for multi‐parental generation of offspring is presented and a known mutation operator is extended to harden parts of genotypes involved in good behavior, thus narrowing down the dimensions of the search space. A storage called memory genome for archiving the best genomes of every robot introduces a decentralized elitist strategy. These operators are studied in a factorial set of experiments by evolving two different benchmark behaviors such as collision avoidance and gate passing on a simulated swarm of robots. A comparison with a related approach is provided.

The framework is capable of robustly evolving the benchmark behaviors. The memory genome and the number of parents for reproduction highly influence the quality of the results; the recombination operator leads to an improvement in certain parameter combinations only.

Future studies should focus on further improving mutation and recombination. Generality statements should be made by studying more behaviors and there is a need for experimental studies with real robots.

The design of decentralized ER frameworks is improved.

The framework is robust and has the advantage that the resulting controllers are easier to analyze than in approaches based on artificial neural networks. The findings suggest improvements in the general design of decentralized ER frameworks.

Purpose – This chapter explores mothering scripts among women of color and the intersection of race/ethnicity, social class, and family background in their narratives.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 24 African American and Latina mothers, this study analyzes the extent to which their narratives reflect more “intensive” or “extensive” mothering scripts.Findings – African American mothers typically drew from “extensive mothering” narratives, whereas Latina mothers’ scripts were more varied.Research implications – The findings point to the importance of and complexities in an intersectionality perspective: Latinas’ mothering scripts generally varied more across social class categories than those of African American mothers. However, African American mothers’ discussions of stress were mediated by their social class background.Social implications – The chapter concludes with the implications of this research for scholarship on families, and for social policies surrounding caregiving and employment.Originality/value – While rich theoretical and empirical works explore women of color and their family lives, few to none ask mothers themselves to talk about their actual and ideal experiences of motherhood. This chapter fills this gap by exploring the mothering scripts of women of color from diverse class backgrounds