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During communication, the interpretation of utterances is sensitive to a listener's probabilistic prior beliefs. In this paper, we focus on the influence of prior beliefs on so‐called exhaustivity interpretations, whereby a sentence such as Mary came is understood to mean that only Mary came. Two theoretical origins for exhaustivity effects have been proposed in the previous literature. On the one hand are perspectives that view these inferences as the result of a purely pragmatic process (as in the classical Gricean view, and more recent Bayesian approaches); on the other hand are proposals that treat them as the result of an encapsulated semantic mechanism (Chierchia, Fox & Spector 2012). We gain traction on adjudicating between these two approaches with new theoretical and experimental evidence, focusing on the behavior of different models for exhaustivity effects, all of which fit under the Rational Speech Act modeling framework (RSA, Frank & Goodman, 2012). Some (but not all!) of these models include an encapsulated semantic mechanism. Theoretically, we demonstrate that many RSA models predict not only exhaustivity, but also anti‐exhaustivity, whereby "Mary came" would convey that Mary and someone else came. We evaluate these models against data obtained in a new study which tested the effects of prior beliefs on both production and comprehension, improving on previous empirical work. We find that the models which have the best fit to human behavior include an encapsulated exhaustivity mechanism. We conclude that, on the one hand, in the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics, semantics plays a larger role than is often thought, but, on the other hand, the tradeoff between informativity and cost which characterizes all RSA models does play a central role for genuine pragmatic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal ranking is a hazardous endeavour even if it is based on objective criteria. Additional problems arise from the use of an opinion-based bucket classification of journals. As a bucket classification system, the ABDC list encourages rent-seeking and arbitrage whereby a researcher goes for the lowest-quality journal within each bucket or moves to another bucket. The quality of research output should not be judged on the basis of a predetermined list. It would be beneficial if the Australian Business Deans Council list were abandoned for the same reasons that led to the abandonment of the Excellence in Research for Australia list. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does spouses' relative education explain their household's distribution of labor? This paper analyzes the effect of spouses' education on time allocated to housework and paid work. To address endogeneity concerns, I exploit changes in spouses' relative education due to remarriage to identify its effects on their time allocation. I find that when a husband marries a wife with a higher relative education than their previous spouse, his share of time on housework increases while his share of time on paid work decreases. In contrast, I find nonsignificant results when a wife remarries a more educated husband than her previous one. I also find that changes in the spouse's education reduce the probability of a spouse staying at home. These findings show that relative human capital plays a role in household labor distribution and motivates a more gender‐neutral division of labor within households due to a more evenly distributed time allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My impressions of inframarginal economics are: • It is best interpreted as providing underlying support for marginal economics. • Inframarginalists take as self-evident that division of labour and specialisation economies are paramount in economic progress. To justify this, inframarginalists need to develop the empirical side of their field. • Inframarginalists make insufficient use of computers. They specify stylised models, omitting many real-world phenomena that are routinely included in models computed for applied work. Inframarginalists seem wedded to analytical solutions. • Inframarginalists write papers mainly for inframarginalists. They need to demonstrate the value of their work by making it relevant to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The steady growth of international trade in intermediate goods and services has made the relationship between trade and the international division of labour more complex. For 39 countries, the author decomposes the employment effects of international trade into five components, namely, the labour content of - or employment generated by - (1) exports; (2) imports; (3) the import content of exports; (4) the export content of imports; and (5) the third-country import content of imports. He shows that in 2009, trade in intermediate goods accounted for some 88 million jobs - 14 per cent of all jobs generated by international trade - while the import content of exports accounted for 44 million jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The United States transformed itself from a rural to an urban society over the last three centuries. After a century of unremarkable growth, the pace of urbanization was historically unprecedented between the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the twentieth century, the urban population continued to increase but in a much more dispersed manner as the suburban population increased. Throughout these developments, cities also exhibited considerable variation in their population sizes. This paper finds that the pace and pattern of U.S. urban development are explained by changes in regional comparative advantage and in economies in transportation and local public goods, which in turn were determined by the changes in the economic structures of cities. This paper also finds that cities varied considerably in size because the larger cities reduced market transaction costs associated with coordinating greater geographic division of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the essay "Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society," published in the March 1, 1994 issue of the journal "Sociological Forum." The author of the article feels that it has several dimensions. It begins by touching several dimensions like the quality of the translations, meta-theoretical aspects and contexts of the pioneering book and its meta-theoretical assumptions and one major research technique, empirical indicators. The paper opens with a rebuke to the translator. It takes no notice of the basic theoretical contributions of the work. It had a dismal quality of the translation. The graduate student evidently resonated to writer Emile Durkheim's early recognition of the importance of identifying indicators and devices indices of conceptualized social realities as a basic procedure in theory-based empirical enquiry. Two kinds of reductionist theories were rejected as both were categorized as undermined by facts.

A political economic analysis of mass media and culture is conspicuously absent in geography. The symbolic or textual emphasis of most materialist media theories presents media simply as a struggle over images, omitting space from the equation altogether, except in metaphorical terms. This paper presents a framework for understanding the conditions under which culture is increasingly produced by media corporations for the global accumulation of capital. The paper first discusses the importance of thinking about the production of culture as the ‘industrial production of culture’ and its relationship to the media as part of the capitalist division of labour. Second, it explores more fully the spatial and material limits to the industrial production of culture through mass media. Lastly, it uses MTV and its ‘360°’ initiative as a critical case study to describe the role of a particularly successful industrial cultural producer within the spatial division of labour, as an advertising platform for international marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kaindi area of Papua New Guinea is home to a large community of Anga small-scale miners. While they constitute nearly half of the local population, women do not participate in mining to the same extent as the men. Drawing on ethnographic data this paper shows that this is not just due to personal choice but also to a series of limiting factors that include pollution beliefs, land tenure practices, the unequal control of household resources, and the gendered division of labour. Far from being simply intrinsic to Anga culture, these impediments also relate to the gendered history of the colonial goldfields and to contemporary national law and company practice in the extractive sector. Similarly, they are neither unambiguous nor resistant to change. Indeed, since the Anga first entered the mines their women have engaged in resource extraction in ever increasing numbers, both independently and alongside male relatives and partners. Through an analysis of this historical trend, my paper will show that historically conscious ethnography can help specify not only the main obstacles women face in entering artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), but also the conditions that lead to their strengthening or weakening through time, thus identifying factors to be stimulated or countered in policies and strategies for equitable development within the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that, based on Yang and Zhang's (2003) analysis, economic development can be viewed as an evolutionary process of division of labour that is driven by improvements in transaction efficiency. Both economic development and income inequality are consequences of this process; there is no systematic relationship between the two. Implications of the Yang-Zhang analysis for government policies, including the allocation of foreign aid, are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xiaokai Yang's theory of economic specialisation under increasing returns to scale is a formal development of the fundamental Smith-Young theorem on the extent of the market and the social division of labour. In this theory specialisation--and thus the social division of labour--is firmly embedded in a system of perfectly competitive markets. This leaves unresolved whether and how such development processes are possible in economies based on more primitive, non-market organisations. In this paper we discuss a general relational model of economic interaction. Within this non-market environment we discuss the emergence of economic specialisation and eventually of economic trade and a social division of labour. We base our approach on three levels in organisational development: the presence of a stable relational structure; the presence of relational trust and subjective specialisation; and, finally, the emergence of objective specialisation through the institution and social recognition of economic roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. Drawing upon the development of fish markets in a Chinese fishery community, this paper investigates the impact of transaction costs on the institutional structure of exchange. Fish markets in this region are connected and organized into a hierarchical network. This structure of fish markets dramatically reduces the cost for geographically distanced fishermen and consumers to execute trades. However, the provision of the market itself requires entrepreneurial efforts. In this study, the market is conceptualized as a continuum of middlemen, whose entrepreneurial efforts of buying and selling make the market work. When the middleman makes profits, the market is at work. Otherwise, the market fails to emerge. Comparing the different ways of organizing fish transportation at two distinct villages, this paper shows that the choice of the market or the firm to organize fish transportation is determined by the cost of putting the market to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of sex and gender is concerned with documenting the existence of differences between the sexes and explaining why those differences exist. This paper first examines what we know about how women and men differ, focusing on differences in social roles, and in the abilities and traits associated with those roles. The paper then examines why women and men differ. In addressing this question, the roles of both biological and social influences are considered. Although there is reason to believe some sex differences in behavior and attitudes have a biological basis, the existence of historical and cross-cultural variation in gender role differentiation and stratification provides strong evidence that social influences play an important role in the determination of differences between the sexes. Both biological and social factors have influenced the division of labor by sex, and the division of labor provides the basis for gender stratification by affecting the degree to which each sex is able to acquire and control the valuable resources of a society. Reduction of gender inequality in contemporary societies therefore requires reduction of gender differentiation in the division of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the formation of the ethnic division of labour within the Jewish population in Israel during the rapid economic growth of the first decade of the existence of the state. It is argued that the division of labour stemmed from the specific patterns of economic development and the expanding capitalist relations of production. This approach is opposed to the functionalist view which argues that the position of the oriental immigrants was determined by their ‘traditional&rsqou;, pre-immigration, characteristics. Four major economic spheres—argiculture, construction, industry and the civil services—are examined in terms of the specific pattern of growth in each sphere, the ethnic division of labour it entailed and the ethnic division of rewards. Finally, the paper discusses the function of the dominant ideology in disguising the concrete ethnic-class relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares for a Brecher-type minimum-wage economy the shortand long-run effects of exogenous capital growth on national income and the division of labor between skilled and unskilled workers. An increased stock of physical capital may reduce both employment and national income in the short run. If, however, increased physical capital stimulates the formation of human capital, the long-run level of national income can exceed its pre-growth level despite a temporary income loss. The conditions are derived and discussed under which such reversals in the level of national income arise. Also, it is argued that correcting the distortions due to a minimum wage calls for an additional instrument besides the familiar economy-wide employment subsidy. Two options for a second policy, a tax on the unskilled wage and an education subsidy, are examined and their relations to an employment subsidy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outsourcing has become an important strategy for many firms. Yet, firms need to compete with their competitors who also outsource and may share the same suppliers. This article explores how a firm could outperform others in managing the division of labor with a supplier in product development. Drawing on the empirical data collected from the Japanese auto industry, this paper shows that an automaker needs capabilities to coordinate various activities both externally with a supplier and internally within its own organization, in order to gain better component development performance. Overall, the results imply that outsourcing does not work effectively without extensive internal effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to test for the presence of dualism in a standard wage regression. The disparity in wages between primary and secondary workers, according to labour market segmentation theory, is not provided by worker characteristics, but rather by job characteristics. A standard way to assess this situation is by looking at the estimated coefficients in a standard regression for comparable workers across different labour market segments. In an attempt to avoid arbitrary modelling choices, we deploy mixture regression methods which allow for endogenous determination of the number of existing labour market segments. Using Italian data, our modelling strategy outlines stark differences in returns to human capital between homogeneous workers in different markets. Thus, future policies should consider these findings when implementing labour market measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment has consequences for individuals, but its impacts also reverberate through families. This paper examines how families adapt to unemployment in one area of life-time in housework. Using 74,881 observations from 10,390 couples in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we estimate fixed effects models and find that individuals spend between 3 and 7 hours more per week in housework when unemployed than when employed, with corresponding decreases of 1 to 2 hours per week in the housework hours of unemployed individuals' spouses. We are the first to show that unemployment is associated both with a reallocation of housework to the unemployed spouse and an increase in the family's total household production time. The results also provide evidence for gender differences in adjustments to the division of labor during unemployment, with wives' unemployment associated with an increase in housework hours that is double the increase for unemployed husbands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an ethnographically grounded examination of the intersections between work, employment and identity for Indigenous people living in a country town in far western New South Wales, Australia. It argues that work, employment and labour are locally deployed categories that meet mainstream discourse in a precarious fashion and, that this disjunction has clear material and ideological repercussions. For most Aboriginal people in Wilcannia, you are who you are, not by virtue of what you have 'become' in any economic, professional or educational sense. Who you are is not a becoming, it is established at birth. These genealogical forms of being through kinship see a construction of self which in many ways is at variance to the standard 'autonomous self-regulating individual' (Sennett 1998:215). This sense of self, for most, is not determined by engagement in the capitalist division of labour; indeed, the greater the engagement in the capitalist economy, the more problematic and fraught a sense of self and of belonging can become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 467 members of a large firm in the United States, this paper found that perceived work-group support is a distinct construct from perceived organizational support. To reinforce the uniqueness of the constructs, the work-group and organizational support constructs exhibited meaningful, differential relationships with six of eight variables reflecting different levels of exchange relationships and commitments. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of strategic management in the marketing proces in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Assessment of the static conception of efficiency; Coordination of labor division; Relationship between economics and strategic management.

This paper examines the economic logic of organizing field technicians into self-managed teams, an approach to work organization that shifts the division of labour from a hierarchical to horizontal one. Economic efficiencies arise through the integration of direct and indirect labour tasks and the alignment of the organizational structure with the occupational logic of communities of practice among technicians. Self-managed teams absorb the monitoring and co-ordination tasks of supervisors, substantially reducing indirect labour costs but without adversely affecting objective measures of quality and labour productivity. For technicians, team membership means longer work hours, but higher wages through overtime pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a simulation study to examine the effects of different organizational structures on the performance of a dual-constraint job shop production system. A hypothetical shop in which machines and workers are constraining resources is the setting of the study. The shop consists of divisions comprised of work centers which contain machines to which workers are assigned. There are fewer workers than machines. Variations in organizational structure are achieved by segmenting a fixed number of work centers equally into varying numbers of divisions. Mean flow-time, flow-time variance, and worker transfers between divisions and work centers are used as performance measures. Changes in organizational segmentation are shown to affect the performance of the production system and the effects are dependent on the extent to which workers can be transferred between the divisions of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the "classicity" of Durkheim `s first book: the innovative way viewing the compatibility of social order and individual autonomy; his sensitive perception of uneasiness with regards to the crisis of anomie; the lucid sociological account, especially the tripartite explanation of the division of labor in terms of its functioning, emergence, and consequences; and the conceptualization of the problem of order--i.e., the relationship of differentiation and integration. In all of these respects, Durkheim's book is a classic. Yet "classical" neither means original nor flawless. This is shown with respect to the relationship of division of labor and organic solidarity by looking at the historical debate on the division of labor, by elucidating mechanical and organic solidarity, and by carving out some of the problems "inside organic solidarity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores two themes that had a significant place in Durkheim's Division of Labor: the idea that people's needs and wants vary across epoches and cultures, and the conception of societies as systems. The first leads to a rejection of efficiency as the primary driving force behind advances in the division of labor. Considering power in addition to efficiency, but also the complex conditions of trust and meaning, leads into questions of interdependence and systems analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new way of looking at social inequality in socialist and nonsocialist societies. In the first section, a conceptual framework for recovering houseworkers for class analysis is introduced, and a historically-based argument for representing them in the occupational structure is advanced. The second section reviews the evolution of social cleavages from the preindustrial era to the present day and discusses the implications of using the same occupational classification scheme to describe both socialist and nonsocialist societies. This occupational classification is illustrated in the concluding section of the paper by reanalyzing data from Hungary and the United States. The results provide new insights into the structure of gender-based inequalities and the effects of socialism on the occupational division of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the effect of the new international division of labor on urbanization in developing countries. Previous histories, particularly of insertion into the world economy, affect responses to the new order. Also, previous phases in the organization of the world economy, particularly those associated with import-substitution industrialization, have shaped the urban systems and urban social organization of developing countries in particular ways. By comparing the tendencies of the import-substituting period with those of the new international division of labor, contrasts are brought out in the patterns of migration, the shape of the urban system, labor markets, and in urban social organization. The overall change is likely to be an increasing divergence, both within developing countries and between them, in their urban organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The failure of sociological and economic models premised on individual decision-making to account for persistent patterns of occupational concentration by race and gender has been a matter of considerable recent interest and debate. One response to this debate has been to explore the impact of various organizational dimensions on the social division of labor as experienced by males and females and/or blacks and whites. The importance of the work place as a locus of occupational restrictions has been widely acknowledged, but empirical research on this topic has been limited by the availability of establishment-level data. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of occupational concentration by race and gender through analysis of 1980 EEOC data on business establishments. The first phase of analysis examines the importance of the work place for occupational concentration by race and gender and places the EEOC data within the context of the 1980 U.S. economy. The second phase of analysis explores the impact of several organizational characteristics on occupational concentration within work establishments.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical research testing the Durkhcimian, ecosystem, and sustenance-organization models of human ecology has been highly ethnocentric. This paper heeds a recent call for new lines of empirical development and testing of ecological hypotheses in non-Western contexts. Ecological studies that used U.S. data to test hypotheses regarding the division of labor and migration are replicated using Thai provincial data. Also, the need for a similar ecological analysis of fertility is suggested, and Thai data are used to conduct a preliminary version of such an analysis. Each of the Third World analyses supports the ecological approach. This movement towards an "ecology of development" reaffirms the predictive power and viability of ecological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Population & Development Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper demonstrates the importance of the concept of mesostructure for understanding how families create and enact a gendered division of labor. The work of symbolic interactionists, especially those using the negotiated order perspective, is used to examine linkages and processes of articulation between, the public and private worlds. Mesostructure provides a conceptual device for examining how men and women merge their respective activities within the context of social constraints. Six interlinked concepts developed by Hall (1987)--collective activity, network, conventions-practices, resources-power, processuality-temporality, and grounding--form the foundation for a mesostructural analysis of family division of labor These concepts are used to explicate the interaction of structure and process in gender division of labor In families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines an aspect of the Irish economy in 1841 that was shared to some degree by all European countries at that time, that is, the regional variation in the division of labour and in the specialization of the proto-industrial and agricultural labor force. The author remarks that, since economist Adam Smith's famous description of an eighteenth-century pin factory, there has been perhaps no more percipient treatment of the division of labour and its relationship to productivity and efficiency. Translated into general sociological terms, growth and labour specialization demand that the spectrum of distinct occupations widens as a society increases in productivity. Economic historians have recently expressed interest in the stockpile of European occupational data surviving from the nineteenth century and sometimes earlier periods. These occupational data are found in censuses, tax records, estate papers, and sometimes earlier period. As a basis of social categorization, demographers and sociologists employ occupational data, but their primary interests lie elsewhere, household and family size, social mobility, migration, crime, and rebellion.

The aim of this article is to show the influence of technical factors on supervisor-worker relations in the coal industry by examining three systems of mining. Each differs according to the degree of mechanization involved, the extent of the division of labour, and the nature of the functions required of the first-line supervisor; and under each of them relations between the miners and their immediate superior tend to assume a distinctive pattern. The main emphasis in the paper is placed on ways in which different forms of technical organization can give rise to situations where there is a predisposition for supervisor-worker conflict to occur. It will be seen that the propensity to create tensions of this kind is not equally marked in the case of each system. One of the methods of mining to be studied include the pre-mechanization or hand-got system. This is taken as it existed in the nineteenth century, in areas other than where supervision was exercised by sub-contractors, and in the early twentieth century after the general demise of the system in favour of supervision by paid officials. The hand-got method began slowly to decline in importance after the first World War with the introduction of machinery underground.

This article analyzes the patterns of social life of youth in the social structure of Israel. A large part of adolescents in Israel participate in patterns of behaviour and social organizations specific to them. The predominance of groups of age-mates in immigration countries has been for long noticed and analysed by some American sociologists and this tendency can be even more strongly discerned in Israel. Moreover, this paper will discuss a proposition that the emergence of youth culture is closely related to the prevalence of the second type of social division of labour. The traditional oriental family may be seen as an example of the first type of division of labour. Almost the whole social organization has been organized on the basis of patriarchal families. The families were the units of occupational specialization. The cooperative-settlement and the moshava are less pure and extreme examples of a division of labour based on the family. In fact there is some degree of discrepancy between some important social roles and the familial roles. The second type of social division of labour is most clearly discernible in the urban sector, in which the family does not function either as a full economic or cultural and political unit. In the communal settlements (Kibbutzim) the clearest correlation between the unfamilial division of labour and a very intensive and formalized youth culture is discernible.

Division of labor can evolve when social groups benefit from the functional specialization of its members. Recently, a novel means of coordinating the division of labor was found in the antibiotic‐producing bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, where specialized cells are generated through large‐scale genomic re‐organization. We investigate how the evolution of a genome architecture enables such mutation‐driven division of labor, using a multiscale computational model of bacterial evolution. In this model, bacterial behavior—antibiotic production or replication—is determined by the structure and composition of their genome, which encodes antibiotics, growth‐promoting genes, and fragile genomic loci that can induce chromosomal deletions. We find that a genomic organization evolves, which partitions growth‐promoting genes and antibiotic‐coding genes into distinct parts of the genome, separated by fragile genomic loci. Mutations caused by these fragile sites mostly delete growth‐promoting genes, generating sterile, and antibiotic‐producing mutants from weakly‐producing progenitors, in agreement with experimental observations. This division of labor enhances the competition between colonies by promoting antibiotic diversity. These results show that genomic organization can co‐evolve with genomic instabilities to enable reproductive division of labor. Synopsis: A computational model of the multicellular bacteria Streptomyces reveals that if antibiotic production trades off with replication, genome architecture can evolve to support a mutation‐driven division of labor.In silico bacterial colonies divide labor between replication and antibiotic production by evolving a genome architecture that physically segregates genes for these different functions and allows them to be dissociated due to mutations at fragile sites.Division of labor is driven by mutations and is reminiscent of the division between germ and soma in multicellular eukaryotes: One class of cells specializes in reproduction, while the other class, comprising the mutants, focuses on costly antibiotic production.In this system, which replicates dynamics observed in S. coelicolor, mutant cells effectively function as soma by enhancing colony fitness, despite being sterile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ant societies are primarily composed of females, whereby labor is divided into reproductive, or queen, and non‐reproductive, or worker, castes. Workers and reproductive queens can differ greatly in behavior, longevity, physiology, and morphology, but queen–worker differences are usually modest relative to the differences in males. Males are short‐lived, typically do not provide the colony with labor, often look like a different species, and only occur seasonally. It is these differences that have historically led to their neglect in social insect research, but also why they may facilitate novel phenotypic variation – by increasing the phenotypic variability that is available for selection. In this study, worker variation in multivariate size–shape space paralleled male–queen variation. As worker variation increased within species, so did sexual variation. Across species in two independent genera, using head width as a proxy for body size, sexual size dimorphism correlated with worker polymorphism regardless of whether the ancestral condition was large or small worker/sexual dimorphism. Mounting molecular data support the hypothesis that queen–worker caste determination has co‐opted many genes/pathways from sex determination. The molecular evidence, coupled with the observations from this study, leads to the hypothesis that sexual selection and selection on colony‐level traits are non‐independent, and that sexual dimorphism may even have facilitated the evolution of the distinct worker caste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the middle of the eighteenth century the word "liberal" had had multiple non‐political meanings. Adam Smith famously advances "the liberal plan" of political economy. In The Wealth of Nations he indicates several ways that his liberal plan is "liberal" in a non‐political sense. The liberal plan leads to economic growth, which leads to a rise in real wages and population through an extending division of labor. The liberal plan facilitates market integration, leading toward a distribution of food supplies that could be called liberal and generous if it was brought about by design of a distributor. The liberal plan entails a generous view of the person that dignifies the mundane and elevates ordinary work. Considering ways that Smith's liberal plan is "liberal" shines light on the soul of classical liberal political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People working as a team can achieve more than when working alone due to a team's ability to parallelize the completion of tasks. In collaborative search tasks, this necessitates the formation of effective division of labor strategies to minimize redundancies in search. For such strategies to be developed, team members need to perceive the task's relevant components and how they evolve over time, as well as an understanding of what others will do so that they can structure their own behavior to contribute to the team's goal. This study explored whether the capacity for team members to coordinate effectively can be related to how participants structure their search behaviors in an online multiplayer collaborative search task. Our results demonstrated that the structure of search behavior, quantified using detrended fluctuation analysis, was sensitive to contextual factors that limit a participant's ability to gather information. Further, increases in the persistence of movement fluctuations during search behavior were found as teams developed more effective coordinative strategies and were associated with better task performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss different types of cultural diversity recomposition that can occur in monoculture work groups. Several direct effect propositions are set forth about the impact of cultural diversity recomposition type on monoculture group effectiveness, as are several moderating effect propositions. We identify potential moderators that have not been explored in prior research and discuss the implications that each has for organizational behavior and practice. We then discuss some implications for future research. We conclude this article with a call for establishing a research agenda that will guide our thinking as we explore this topic in more depth. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Division of labor occurs when cooperating individuals specialize to perform different tasks. In bacteria and other microorganisms, some species divide labor by random specialization, where an individual's role is determined by random fluctuations in biochemical reactions within the cell. Other species divide labor by coordinating across individuals to determine which cells will perform which task, using mechanisms such as between‐cell signaling. However, previous theory, examining the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor between reproductives and sterile helpers, has only considered clonal populations, where there is no potential for conflict between individuals. We used a mixture of analytical and simulation models to examine nonclonal populations and found that: (a) intermediate levels of coordination can be favored, between the extreme of no coordination (random) and full coordination; (b) as relatedness decreases, coordinated division of labor is less likely to be favored. Our results can help explain why coordinated division of labor is relatively rare in bacteria, where groups may frequently be nonclonal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group I biotin protein ligases (BPLs) catalyze the covalent attachment of biotin to its cognate acceptor proteins. In contrast, Group II BPLs have an additional N‐terminal DNA‐binding domain and function not only in biotinylation but also in transcriptional regulation of genes of biotin biosynthesis and transport. Most bacteria contain only a single biotin protein ligase, whereas Clostridium acetobutylicum contains two biotin protein ligase homologs: BplA and BirA′. Sequence alignments showed that BplA is a typical group I BPL, whereas BirA′ lacked the C‐terminal domain conserved throughout extant BPL proteins. This raised the questions of why two BPL homologs are needed and why the apparently defective BirA′ has been retained. We have used in vivo and in vitro assays to show that BplA is a functional BPL whereas BirA′ acts as a biotin sensor involved in transcriptional regulation of biotin transport. We also successfully converted BirA′ into a functional biotin protein ligase with regulatory activity by fusing it to the C‐terminal domain from BplA. Finally, we provide evidence that BplA and BirA′ interact in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as the lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade‐off between the informativity of a form and the prominence of its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns as in the sentence Corre (meaning "He/She/It runs") as referring to the most prominent referent in the discourse, and more informative overt pronouns (e.g., lui in Lui corre, "He runs") as referring to less prominent referents. Although children acquiring Italian are known to experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division of pragmatic labor between null and overt subject pronouns, and how this relates to the development of their cognitive capacities. Here we show that cognitive development can account for the general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian‐speaking children and adults. Using experimental studies and computational simulations in a framework modeling bounded‐rational behavior, we argue that null pronoun interpretation is influenced by working memory capacity and thus appears to depend on discourse context, whereas overt pronoun interpretation is influenced by processing speed, suggesting that listeners must reason about the speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate that cognitive capacities may constrain the acquisition of linguistic forms and their meanings in various ways. The novel predictions generated by the computational simulations point out several directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective‐taking in communication, suggesting that perspective‐taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective‐taking should depend on their expectations about the other's allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource‐rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective‐taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade‐off between expected costs and benefits of perspective‐taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director–matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for "known unknowns" in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective‐taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply "mindblind"; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource‐rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective‐taking under processing constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a stratified random sample of adults aged 40 and older, interviewed in Hamilton, Ontario, more than half the respondents indicated that there was someone in their extended family who could be considered a "kinkeeper," someone who works at keeping family members in touch with one another. In this study kinkeeping is viewed as a position in a familial division of labor. The paper examines the identification of the position, the work of kinkeeping, the way in which the position is structured, the dynamics of position occupancy, and the consequences for families of having a kinkeeper. Kinkeeping is primarily a female activity and is related to the importance sibling relationships hold for people. The position of kinkeeper persists over time, and occupancy is frequently passed from mother to daughter. Having a family kin keeper is related to greater extended family interaction and greater emphasis on family ritual at both extended family and lineage levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response to Otero's criticism of the thesis of the nonrevolutionary character of biotechnology is developed within a larger consideration of the relatively small amount of attention high technologies have received within the sociology of science. It is argued that the "new sociology of science" of the past decade has been a major advance on midcentury functionalist perspectives that took an essentialist, defrrential view toward science. The new socioiogy of science, based on the demystification of science through a relativist view of scientific knowledge production, is nonetheless limited in several respects in its applicability to contemporary issues relating to high technologies. Otero's criticisms are considered in the light of the continuing need for uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology, and for developing a perspective on science and technology that avoids both uncritical deference and excessive relativization of these forces for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used data from a national survey of 741 men and 964 women to examine life-cycle variations in (a) satisfaction with the division of household labor; and (b) the relationship between satisfaction with the division of household labor and marital quality. Wives' satisfaction with the division of household labor followed a pronounced U-shaped curve across the life cycle, while husbands' satisfaction did not. Satisfaction with the division of household labor was moderately related to both wives' and husbands' marital quality across almost all life-cycle stages. Satisfaction with the division of labor was more important in explaining marital happiness and conflict than were age, educational attainment, or wife's employment status, while only age was more important in explaining verbal aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assumes this unique presence of the GTC, which offers the manufacturing firm an alternative to marketing the product on its own. Moreover, the marketing technology is assumed to differ for the GTC and the manufacturer. That is, the GTC enjoys economies of scale and scope while the manufacturer benefits from learning as it does its own marketing. Justifications for this assumption follow [3, 48-50; 9, 140-44; 10, 118-22]. Addressing the question of how the division of labor between manufacturers and trading firms is determined, the trade-off between the two marketing channels were explored, i.e., using the GTC and doing on its own with learning-by-doing. By limiting the analysis to the monopoly case, it is possible to focus on the determinants of the choice of the marketing channel, mainly the demand parameters and the cost structure with either marketing channel. The different regimes of profit-maximization, first-best and second-best with either marketing channel were examined. Iso-profit or iso-total surplus curves were derived, which resulted in combinations of the commission rate and the speed of learning, t and k, that render equal profit or equal total surplus no matter which marketing channel is used. Profit-maximization may favor the use of the GTC while learning-by-doing fares better under first-best and second-best; but not vice versa. This is partly due to the fact that learning-by-doing produces declining unit marketing cost over time while the use of the GTC does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Symbolic interactionism lacks a coherent conception of power. This paper defines power in a manner consistent with the interactionist perspective. Power is conceptualized as a collective transaction characterized by a division of labor, movement toward a common end, and flexible coordination between opponents. Power is distinguished from other types of collective transactions by asymmetrical interaction, a conflict of interests between opponents, and the intentional production of compliance. Some implications of considering power as a collective transaction are then examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]