The Role of Public Service Motivation in Employee Work Engagement: A Test of the Job Demands-Resources Model

The study investigates the nature of public service motivation’s (PSM) relationship to employee work engagement. Using the Job Demands-Resource Model, the authors compare whether PSM as a resource is an antecedent to employee work engagement or has a buffering effect on job hindrances of perceived red tape in explaining employee work engagement. They surveyed 388 supervisors and managers in a public-sector organization in the United States. The findings support PSM as an antecedent along with perceived job influence and perceived procurement red tape to employee work engagement.     

Leadership in multiple perpetrator stranger rape

Sexual offences by multiple perpetrators are more violent and involve more severe forms of sexual violation than those perpetrated by a lone offender. Often a clear leader exists within these groups. Questions have been raised as to the relative risk of reoffending and the potentially differing criminogenic needs of leaders and followers. However, a recent study comparing leaders and followers in juvenile multiple perpetrator rapes (t'Hart-Kerkhoffs et al., 2011) failed to find some of the expected differences. It was proposed that this might be due, in part, to the way leaders and followers were classified in the study. Before work can progress in this area, it is important to devise reliable and valid means of identifying leaders and followers in multiple perpetrator rape. This article reports on a study which investigated the utility of two different methods of identifying leadership. The Scale of Influence (Porter & Alison, 2001) was applied to a sample of 256 offenders responsible for 95 multiple perpetrator rapes from the United Kingdom. Following this, the relative number of directives uttered by offenders was used to designate leadership. In 66% of the offences sampled, a leader was designated using the number of directives uttered compared with 80% when using the Scale of Influence. When combining both measures to form a composite measure of leadership, this percentage increased to 89%. Classifications of offenders as leaders, followers, and neither, according to the Scale of Influence, the count of directives, and the composite measure, were compared with classifications made by a practitioner to assess their concordance. The composite measure showed the greatest agreement with practitioner opinion. These findings suggest that the Scale of Influence could be developed to take account of other ways that leadership is displayed during multiple perpetrator rapes.     

The politics of greater China's integration into the global Info Tech (IT) supply chain

The most notable feature of the public ‘dialogue of the deaf’ taking place across the Strait separating Taiwan and China is its zero‐sum logic. This logic of one‐upmanship in political and security matters dictates that whatever benefits Taipei is detrimental to Beijing and vice versa. Commercial interaction between Taiwan and China, particularly in the broadly defined sector of information technology (IT), is arguably the more powerful driver of cross‐Strait interaction today. Two characteristics of this accelerating dynamic of commercial interaction across the Taiwan Strait are paramount: (1) its tight integration into a global IT supply chain; and (2) the extent of symbiosis by which all participants in this global supply chain depend on the worldwide vitality of this economic ecosystem. In interpreting what cross‐Strait economic integration in IT portends, political logic may be leading Taipei and Beijing along opposite paths to the same end‐point: the presumption that economic integration is undermining, and destabilizing, the cross‐Strait economic and political status quo. As a dominant player in global IT, the US has its own stake in a clear understanding of this globalization dynamic and in astutely maintaining its interests as the global IT supply chain continues to extend across the political fault‐line of the Taiwan Strait. Non‐partisan analysis of the logic of globalization suggests a different outcome for the cross‐Strait commercial dynamic than either Taipei or Beijing has publicly credited: its potential to mutually enhance economic prosperity and contribute long‐term to stabilizing cross‐Strait political interaction.     

Regional Innovation Systems: General Findings and Some New Evidence from Biotechnology Clusters

This paper focuses on interactive innovation. It starts by operationalising Regional Innovation in the context of multi-level governance. It shows how regional and external innovation interaction among firms and other innovation organizations is important for regional innovation potential. The ability to access and use funding for innovation support for regional firms and organizations is crucial for regional innovation promotion. Equity investment funding is more important than public funding, which tends to be cautious and otherwise risk avoiding, except in circumstances of market arrest or failure to develop. Regional systems of innovation are broader than single sectors or clusters but some of these will be strategically privileged recipients of policy support because of their growth performance or potential, rather than, as in the past, their uncompetitiveness. The paper devotes space to exploring biotechnology clustering from a regional innovation systems viewpoint, as an instance of rather strong sectoral, regional innovation systems capabilities, though integrated also to global knowledge supply and markets. Illustration is provided of the way such sectoral innovation systems work at local regional level by reference to cases from Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cambridge, England.     

A Time Series Modeling Approach in Risk Appraisal of Violent and Sexual Recidivism

For over half a century, various clinical and actuarial methods have been employed to assess the likelihood of violent recidivism. Yet there is a need for new methods that can improve the accuracy of recidivism predictions. This study proposes a new time series modeling approach that generates high levels of predictive accuracy over short and long periods of time. The proposed approach outperformed two widely used actuarial instruments (i.e., the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide and the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide). Furthermore, analysis of temporal risk variations based on specific time series models can add valuable information into risk assessment and management of violent offenders.     

Coalitions: Beyond the Politics of Centrality?

This article examines the character of oppositional movements in the GDR in the light of post‐Wende revelations of Stasi infiltration. We look at responses by members of the alternative culture to accusations that their work during the GDR was rendered ineffective by the Stasi and is consequently of little importance to a historical reappraisal of the GDR. Whilst they were clearly aware of the Stasi, whose influence did have an effect, our evidence suggests that this influence was not total. Current debates about the Stasi are creating an unbalanced view of the actual situation in the GDR before 1989 in that the Stasi is being portrayed as an organisation of almost Orwellian Big Brother proportions. Our article attempts to deconstruct this paradigm and argues that the complicity of the few with the MfS should not invalidate the activities of the majority of those involved in the alternative culture.     

Book reviews

D. Leebart (ed.), The Future of Software, The MIT Press, 1995. Hardcover, £19.95, 300 pp, ISBN 0‐262‐12184‐0

David Bainbridge, Software Copyright Law, 2nd edn, Butterworths, 1994. Softcover £35.00, 272 + xvi pp. ISBN 0‐406‐04841‐X

Andrew Christie, Integrated Circuits and Their Contents: International Protection, Sweet & Maxwell, 1995. Hardcover, £85.00. ISBN 0‐421‐48380‐6

S. White, S. Bate and T. Johnson, Satellite Communications in Europe: Law & Regulation, 2nd edn, FT Tax and Law, 1996. Hardcover, £135.00 xlvi + 456 pp. ISBN 0‐752‐002119‐8

A. Valente, Legal Knowledge Engineering: a Modelling Approach. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Volume 30, IOS Press, 1995. Softcover, £52.00, 227 pp. ISBN 90‐5199‐23‐0

Professor Christopher Arnold, Outsourcing Contracts, Pearson Professional, 1995. 114 pp.